Not a Secret Anymore
by Mooka333
Summary: Sequel to 'It's Been a Long, Long Time': Hannah's secrets are spilled with SHIELD's and now it's time to run. The enemy has a million faces, but she hardly remembers the face of the only person she truly trusts. Help comes in the form of unlikely and uncertain connections to Steve Rogers, and running beneath everything is the biggest of secret of all.
1. Chapter 1

***** Here's the sequel! It takes place immediately after where 'It's Been a Long, Long Time' ended. A lot more action-packed and fast paced than the first, so the tone is different – hope you all enjoy, and, as per usual, I own nothing in the entire Marvel universe, but my OCs are allll mine *****

 _Fucking SHIELD_ , she thought resentfully, _they were always dirty._ The day after Hannah had seen Steve on the news, arrested with his fellow Avenger, Black Widow, by the organization they each once served, she found herself angry at the information that was leaking into the press. Information being leaked by SHIELD saying that the two of them were bad, traitors, murderers, disloyal to their own cause.

She didn't believe any of it. She may not have seen Steve in a couple of years, but she knew his inherent goodness. They hadn't parted ways because he was a bad man. They parted ways because he was simply too loyal, too much of a hero, too devoted to the protection of all those he saw in need of it, mostly through the work he did at SHIELD.

It was SHIELD and their unending need to know everything, and to control everything, which left her truly filled with hatred. She loathed them to this day for upending her life and making her realize that her own freedom, her own privacy, was really only granted at their will.

The day after watching Steve being labelled as a criminal on national TV, all hell broke loose when every secret SHIELD had ever held was leaked onto the internet, unbeknownst to her. Hannah herself was too busy staring out a window of her office building with her co-workers, watching in horror as giant airships crashed into the Potomac, utterly destroying the government facility that they had been launched from.

She found herself praying for the people who worked at that building, and praying for Steve, hoping he wasn't in there somewhere, now dead. Everyone left work early that day, Hannah included. The streets were absolutely thronged with people. People were unsure about what was happening: was it terrorists? The military? Aliens again? An accident?

Hannah didn't care, she just ran through the crowds until she reached Alex's daycare, where several other overwrought and concerned parents were also desperate to get their children. Hannah almost cried when she laid eyes on her and Steve's son, sitting complacently in the baby play area of his daycare, sucking on his pacifier and playing with a stuffed bunny. _Daddy's in trouble kiddo,_ she thought wildly, as she scooped him up into her arms, _and now the sky is falling._

She loaded Alex into his stroller, waved goodbye to the daycare attendants and fought the crowds until they were home. Getting up the stairs was always a nightmare now, with baby, stroller, and baggage always weighing her down, so she had taken to just bicycle chaining the stroller to the mailboxes in the lobby, and no one said a thing to her about it.

Once back in their apartment, she plopped Alex on the floor to play with his toys, and fielded several frantic calls from friends and family out West, all of whom had seen the disaster unfolding on the news. However, sometime after dinner, the strange calls began. Reporters. Old 'friends'. Someone claiming to be from the FBI. All asking about her past relationship with Steve. The only personal relationship Steve Rogers had been known to have since being unfrozen.

Dread growing heavily in her stomach, Hannah finally snapped and screamed at the last person. " _What the hell are you talking about? How does everyone know?!"_ Alex was startled and began to wail in the background. "Don't you know, Ms. Baker?" The man on the phone said, "It's all over the internet."

"What is?!" She cried, picking up Alex and soothing him, while cradling the phone between her face and her shoulder.

"Everything, SHIELD was breached, everything that organization ever knew or ever did is all over the internet for anybody to see!" The man was almost frantic with excitement and Hannah was disgusted. She hung up and put the phone on silent. _Not answering you again tonight,_ she thought at the phone in irritation, making soothing shushing noises at Alex as she bounced him up and down lightly.

When Alex had settled down, she put him back on the ground to play, and Oliver, her stripy-orange cat, strolled up and began to loll around on the ground in front of Alex, much to the baby's delight.

Hannah went on her computer and jumped straight down the rabbit hole. The guy on the phone wasn't kidding. Everything about her was all over the internet, as were a lot of other things, obviously – but it was her phone number, name, and address that concerned her. The pictures of her. Pictures of her _with_ Steve.

Someone knocked at her door and she spun in her chair with a little cry. She glanced down at Alex who was pushing a matchbox car over and around the cat's belly, and then walked slowly to the door and peeked through the peephole. She didn't recognize the person who stood without, but he just _looked_ like a reporter. _How the hell did he even get in the building without a key?_

She turned away and the knocking continued. Long into the night knocking persisted, some hard knocks, some small and polite, some fast and eager. She slept uneasily, phone at her side and a knife next to her bed, fearing that someone who wasn't a reporter, someone who just wanted revenge on Captain America, might come calling and wouldn't bother knocking. Hannah called in sick for work the next day and began to research plane tickets, thinking she and Alex might need a little break from DC.

Noise outside her window drew her to it and she saw that there was a news van out front. She knew that by now, a day later, a lot of the secrets on the internet had been pulled from the internet as quickly as possible, by the government and other authoritative agencies, for national security most likely. People were left with easy access to the unimportant secrets left behind, and she assumed that her being the only person to have a personal connection to Steve Rogers since he'd come into this new age, to actually have been intimately involved with him, was news-worthy enough fodder – especially after he'd been 'arrested' in the street and then disappeared.

The problem was, much like she'd been warned in the past, back before she and Steve broke up – there were people who would hurt her to get to Steve. And right now it seemed like someone bad wanted to get to Steve, if his altercations with people over the past couple days were any indication. _Shit rolls downhill and you're standing at the bottom with your arms open, waiting for it._

Hannah didn't know what to do. She looked back at her computer and wondered if it was possible to get a hold of someone who could help her. Help make this go away, or something, without revealing too much, without revealing that Alex was who he was. The leak on the internet made it surprisingly easy to find the phone number she was looking for.

"Hello?" He answered shortly, sounding busy and distracted.

"Hi, you might not remember me, but –"

"If this is about Loki and that damn sceptre, I've already said 'no comment' more times than I'd care to, don't make me come find you," his tone was threatening and impatient.

"No! I don't care about that, I'm calling because Steve Rogers – "

" _No Fucking Comment!_ What don't you people understand?" He yelled and hung up. Hannah stared at the phone. She recognized the voice, she knew she had the right man. She dialled again.

"Don't hang up this time!" She cried, but he immediately did so. She growled in frustration and then growled louder and made claws out of her hands when Alex looked over at her in concern. He giggled delightfully at the ruse and turned back to his blocks. Hannah dialled again.

"I need help!" She cried this time, hoping that would stall him long enough to allow her to explain.

"Yeah, professional help, you vulture, fuck off." _CLICK._ Hannah glared at the phone and decided to pull out the big guns this time.

"I called you a caveman!" He didn't hang up, and there was a pause on the other end which seemed to indicate that he was surprised. "You broke me and Steve up, like a total asshole, remember?" She snapped, a little churlishly. There was more silence.

"You remember me, right? Hannah Baker? I'm being hounded too, I need help," she insisted.

"From SHIELD?" Clint asked in disbelief. She shook her head and replied, "No, as far as I can see, SHIELD's not doing so hot, plus we have such an unpleasant past, SHIELD and I."

"How are you being hounded?" He asked gruffly.

"They're calling me, the press, other agencies, random people, all asking about Steve: where is he now, do I know what's going on, am I involved – it's freaking me out and now they're all camped out downstairs. I can't stay in here forever!" She got it all out in one gust and Clint was silent again. "Well?" She asked him impatiently.

"Why did you call me," he said flatly. Hannah got to her feet, her hand fisted over her stomach. "You warned me before, about SHIELD watching me, to make sure I was a good guy, but also to keep me safe from people who were out to get Steve," she told him slowly, trying hard to modulate her voice, "And now everyone knows everything." She glanced down at Alex who had a block in his mouth and was smiling at her around it. "Well, almost everything."

She crouched down and pulled the block from the baby's mouth, replacing it with a pacifier. He flopped down on his side and used the cat's belly as a pillow as he rested for a few moments.

"I'm afraid right now," she finished, her voice quiet.

"Have you spoken to Steve since –"

"No, not once since the day we broke up."

"Yeah, I got an earful for that, you know," Clint complained. He let out a long exasperated sigh.

"Clint, please, I'm worried for my safety and I have… I have a child now, and I'm _terrified_ , that all these people, everyone who knows, that one of them will hurt me, or my baby, because they're trying to get to Steve. You've seen the news, you saw him carted away – he's involved with something bad, some bad people, a bad group, something. I'm afraid they'll come after me because now everyone knows I was his only truly personal connection," she hated to plead, but she had absolutely no one else she could turn to who had even the slightest chance of being effective at helping her.

"I'll be there in a couple of days," he told her, "I'm nowhere near DC and it's going to take some time to figure this out," and then he hung up. She stared at the phone as her heart beat fast and hard. _Am I overreacting?_ She asked herself, pacing back and forth through the living room. Alex and the cat were sprawled out on the floor, napping companionably together. _No, I don't think so._

Hannah left the room, leaving the two loves of her life sleeping together on the soft living room carpet, so she could pack bags. He wasn't going to be there for a couple of days, but she was antsy and wanted to be ready. She had no idea how Clint would be getting her out of her home, but she assumed it would be by car. She didn't want to pack heavy, but travelling with a baby meant that she normally had to. She packed lightly for herself, very basic clothing, very little of it, and then just the staples for toiletries – it hardly filled a regular sized backpack. She filled Alex's diaper bag with baby toiletries and diapers, then stuffed more of his things in on top of her own in the backpack.

She lay the baby Bjorn she still used for Alex on top of everything; the stroller was just too much to bring along with her and she figured she would probably need her hands free. _Never been on the run before, though, or gone into hiding, maybe it's easy,_ she thought, though she seriously doubted her own wishful thinking.

She was in the kitchen gathering up extra bottles, jars of baby food and some formula to stuff into outer pockets on the diaper bag and in her purse, when her eyes caught on the tins of cat food lined up neatly along the counter. _Oh Ollie, what do I do with you?_ She thought worriedly. _Will we be gone for days? A week? Months? Oh shit, what about work?_ She quickly made a beeline for the phone again, ignoring the message on the screen that said she had 25 voicemails and 36 missed calls, and dialled up her work line.

She spoke briefly with her boss, whose tone was knowing and almost amused, as she explained that she would need the next two weeks off. He agreed, and seemed about to ask her more, when she ended the call in a hurry. _I definitely do not want to get into a conversation about all of this now._

She looked down at the phone in her hand when Alex started to crying on the ground. She had been about to call around to try and find a cat sitter for Ollie, but Alex's face was getting red and angry, so she dropped the phone and picked him up. He grabbed for her shoulder with a chubby hand, still crying in little hiccups.

"You stink, kiddo," she murmured to him, nuzzling at his chubby neck. He chuckled then, tears forgotten because of the attention, and tried to duck his head as she carted him off to the bedroom for a changing. As he lay kicking and grabbing at every item within reach, Hannah changed her son's diaper and ran through cat care possibilities in her head. Every turn seemed to require leaving the apartment building, which she was not keen on doing. _I guess as a last resort I could leave the window open and he could run to that lady upstairs…_

As she was zipping Alex back into his overalls, she paused to consider, again, that perhaps she was overreacting. "So everyone knows I dated him, what's the big deal? All the leaked files mention that "contact appears to have been terminated" 2 years ago," she spoke to Alex, smiling at him and using her cartoon-happy voice, and he gave her a big gap-toothed smile back, pleased with the attention, "Maybe nobody cares about an ex-girlfriend?" Alex seemed to grow disinterested with her worries and squirmed to get down, so she put him on the floor and watched him lumber off down the hallway, moving into a waddly little trot halfway to the living room which had him careening off the walls, laughing as he went.

 _Such a happy baby,_ she thought to herself, knowing he didn't get his generally sunny disposition from her; that was Steve to the core. She considered putting fleeing with Clint Barton on hold as she settled onto the couch to watch the news; she wanted to get a sense of what was going on out there. As Alex grunted along loudly to a toy that was singing 'Bah Bah Black Sheep' at him, Hannah took in the latest news.

 _Local authorities are staying mum at this time, but our sources have confirmed that Captain America has gone missing. As you may recall, he was found unconscious on the bank of the Potomac River late yesterday evening by officers patrolling the area. They took him into custody but they were attacked by people believed to be compatriots of Captain America's, and he was taken from police._

Hannah gaped at the earnest reporter on the scene of the horrifying wreckage where the SHIELD facility had once stood. The reporter explained that a manhunt was once again underway for Steve Rogers and his friends.

The scene changed and now a different reporter was standing somewhere familiar. Outside her building. Hannah felt her stomach drop and roil.

 _We are live on the scene outside the apartment building where Steve Rogers, otherwise known as Captain America, once lived. It was here that he met and began dating a young woman. Her name is Hannah Baker._ A photo of Hannah, taken from her Facebook profile flashed on the screen. She cringed. It was a good picture of her, but it was very obviously _her_ ; there could be no mistaking her for someone else. The reporter discussed details about Hannah, her age, how she was originally from Seattle, even the company she worked for.

 _The files released by SHIELD seem to indicate that their romance was passionate and short-lived; she broke things off after only a couple weeks. For a man with such a deeply private personal life, we are left to wonder if the couple ever_ truly _broke things off, or if they have remained together in secret all this time._

 _Baker has refused to comment, and hasn't left her apartment since yesterday according to her neighbors._ The reporter turned to a woman that Hannah recognized, an elderly woman who lived in the unit below Hannah.

" _Ma'am, they say you're her neighbour now, as well as Captain Rogers' neighbour when he lived in the building, what can you tell us about them?" The reporter asked, her white teeth shining as she spoke. Her neighbour looked uncertainly towards the camera and then back over towards the reporter._

" _She's a good girl, always quiet up above me, keeps to herself up there, her and her baby," the woman explained, "Never saw the two of them together, but he was such a nice boy, always helped me with my groceries up the stairs."_

" _Has he ever come back to visit that you know of?" The reporter asked breathlessly, and the neighbor shook her head. "Not that I've ever seen, but then I don't spend time staring out at the hall, you know," the neighbor explained, "I suppose it's possible."_

 _The reporter spun away from the old woman and stepped to the side, reclaiming the attention of the camera all to herself. "There you have it, two nice people, seemingly meant for each other, one of whom still lives here – is it so far out of the realm of possibility that these two people stayed together when they had such chemistry_? _Does Hannah Baker know where Steve Rogers is hiding?"_

The screen cut to a picture taken from the internet, one of the handful of shots of her and Steve together, from the night they had their date – apparently being followed at a distance by SHIELD even then. It was a cheesy picture, from when they were sharing a milkshake, but the zoomed in photo showed a lot of body language that spoke to more than just sharing an innocent ice cream treat. Hannah groaned – it was so much stupid speculation, but they were making it sound very convincing, and given all the secrets and lies floating around, she wondered how long it would be before people began to suspect that Steve was hiding out in her apartment.

She watched carefully, but no pictures of Alex appeared to have been released. She kept him off her social media presence entirely, and while they had his name, _Alexander Baker_ , they had nothing more to go on. One station managed to get his birth certificate, but without a father on it, that was as far facts went – that didn't stop people from speculating further about who his father might be, though.


	2. Chapter 2

***** Enjoy! I OWN NOTHING – except Hannah and Alex *****

Hannah switched the TV off when she'd had enough, a few hours after it first went on. She bathed Alex and put him to bed and then went back to the couch, listening to the soft, faint sound of his mobile's lullaby feature playing. She closed her eyes and wished that hearing Clair de Lune would settle her nerves and send her off to sleep as well as it seemed to do for the baby.

She wasn't sure if people thinking she was squirreling Steve away up here would keep her and Alex safer or less safe, if anyone was intent on doing her harm. There was a knock at her door then, loud and authoritative, and she jumped, but hunched her shoulders to ignore it. She heard a muffled shout from the other side of the door. "MPDC! Open up!" Hannah shot to her feet, feeling an odd combination of relief and fear that the police had arrived.

She jogged to her door and peered out, noting in relief that two fully uniformed officers stood without. She remembered something she had seen on TV and called through the door, "Show me your badges!" The officers looked at one another, but complied. Hannah looked at each badge, deeming that they were indeed very real, or at least they appeared real.

"Ma'am, we are here for your own safety, we have multiple conflicting reports that you may have a fugitive up here, or may be in danger yourself," the taller of the two officers said. Hannah had fumbled out her phone, and was quickly Google searching the phone number for the nearest DC police detachment. "One moment please," she called back, "I'm verifying that you are who you say you are!" She remembered the one self defense class she took in college, how the instructor said that when in doubt, get the badge numbers and call the station to verify they were the real deal.

"I can assure you we are," the stockier officer called back, but they dutifully held up their badges again when she asked them to. The person who answered at the station seemed bemused, but went about searching the numbers, confirming their names and that they were indeed real officers. "Thanks," she said, relief in her tone, "I'm just a little nervous-nelly."

"Better to be safe than sorry," the per son at the police station told her. She opened her door then and the officers nodded at her. She stammered through an apology for making them wait but the taller one shook his head and laid a hand on her shoulder.

"You have a circus of people down there and your life spilled all over the internet, I'm not surprised that you're being cautious," he told her in a deep voice, "Can we take a look around?"

She led them down the hallway and nodded at them. "Only, my son is sleeping, so please be quiet," she urged them. They nodded and looked around, before splitting up into different directions. Hannah followed the taller one into her bedroom, unwilling to let anyone be alone around her son just now. She stood in front of Alex's crib, one hand braced on the edge of the crib, the other hanging inside, just touching his back as he lay peacefully sleeping.

Hannah felt nervous, twitchy, and tingly, and wished she could call Clint Barton and tell him what was happening, see what he had to say. The tall officer looked in and around every inch of her bedroom, before brushing by her to go out into the hall. There was plenty of space for him to pass without touching her, so it made her feel very tense, putting her further on edge. She felt it was a deliberate move, made to make her very aware of the fact that he was in charge. _Why would a cop do that? Unless he thinks I've done something wrong?_

She felt uncomfortable in her flannel sleep pants and the tank top that she'd been lounging around the house in all day, so she stepped lightly away from the crib, once the tall officer had left the room, to her closet. She opened the doors and grabbed a chunky cardigan, wrapping the soft cream-colored garment around herself, tying the belt hastily around her waist. She felt better, armored, not having so much skin showing.

She heard the officers muttering to each other out in the hall and moved swiftly back to the crib, peering in at her son, who had one little pink hand laying against the side of his chubby cheek, his skin flushed with sleep, his golden curls spilled across his forehead. She felt her chest constrict with love for him, and turned to the officers when they entered the bedroom together. The stockier one's eyes dropped down to her feet and back up again, taking in the obvious wardrobe change, and he smirked a little bit, shaking his head. Again she felt that unpleasant tingle run up and down her spine, as he leered at her; this assertion of dominance felt unnecessary and somewhat cruel.

"So?" She asked, leaning her back against the crib and crossing her arms over her chest, "He wasn't up here, obviously, are you satisfied?" The taller one touched a little plug in one of his ears and turned his eyes to hers, obviously listening to words coming from the device. She suddenly didn't like what she was seeing there. Hannah stood up straight, pressing the small of her back flat against the crib, spreading her arms a little bit.

"We didn't find him here," the stockier one said, "You're right about that." Hannah nodded with him, a deep feeling of unease unfurling in her stomach at the mocking tone in his voice.

"Well I guess you'll be going then," she said, forced cheeriness in her voice. The tall one was still listening to the little device in his ear and when he pulled his gun on her, it happened so quickly, and so smoothly, that it took Hannah a long moment to understand what had just occurred.

"Where is he?" The tall man said in a flat hard voice. Hannah was shaking her head, her eyes locked on the barrel of the gun, her hands clutched so tightly to the edge of the crib that the wooden edge of it was hurting her palms.

"I haven't seen him in two years," Hannah was amazed at the firm tone in her own voice, even though her body was shaking just the slightest bit, "You have to believe me, we broke up because I didn't think it was safe." The stocky officer chuckled at that and then darted forward, grabbing her upper arm in a vice-like grip and yanking her towards him. The crib lurched forward as her tight grip on it pulled it with her for a moment, before she released it, making it come up on two legs before thumping heavily back down onto all four again.

Hannah let out a cry when he grabbed her and then the stocky man gripped both her wrists behind her back in one hand, turning her so she was facing the crib. She could hear Alex cry out and then begin to wail at the sharp and sudden movement of his crib, calling out wordlessly for her. The tall officer turned to press the gun against her forehead.

"Tell us what you know, or we kill you, in front of your son," he warned her, his voice almost bored sounding.

"Please, please don't hurt him, please don't hurt my baby," she began to cry, pulling uselessly against the grip on her arms, "I don't know anything, I swear, please don't hurt him!" The tall cop pushed the gun harder into her forehead and the one behind jerked her sharply in his grip.

"We won't hurt him," he soothed her, false, mocking comfort in his voice, "We'll take him with us, one way or the other, because if he is Cap's kid, there are some people who would be very interested in what might be running through his little veins."

Hannah wanted to puke, she got the impression that either way, they were going to kill her, and either way, they were going to take Alex – she had no value to them alive. Alex climbed to his feet in his crib and goggled in almost comedic surprise at the strangers in his room, his cries lowering to an almost immediate whisper. _He doesn't understand, he can't,_ she thought desperately, not wanting him traumatized, _look away baby, look away._

He recognized her tears and the upset on her face though, and reacted the only way a child his age could – he began to cry and scream, huge, red-faced, gusting sobs and shrieks. The tall cop's face twisted in disgust and he turned back to glare at Alex before redirecting the ferocious look to her.

"Tell me now! Where is he? Where is Steve Rogers?!" He yelled at her and she felt her knees go limp in utter fear, and opened her mouth to again yell back that she had no idea. She never made a sound though, because the tall cop's eyes suddenly locked on something behind her and the stocky man. Something, or rather, someone, out in the hallway. His gun lowered from her head as his face twisted in mild confusion.

"What are you doing here?" He asked, his tone exasperated, as if inconvenienced, "You failed your mission, get your ass back to the vault."

"No," the low-voiced word came from the hall, spoken flatly and without emotion, and there was a strange spitting sound to the air. Suddenly the tall cop was growing a round, wet, red wound in his forehead. Hannah let out a shriek of surprise as two things happened at once, Alex's wails feeding the background the whole time: the tall man slumped to the floor, a look of surprise on his face, and the man wrenching her arms behind her back suddenly released her, shoving her away from himself as he turned to the hall.

Hannah tripped over the freshly fallen tall cop and face planted onto the soft surface of her bed. She heard the spitting noise again followed by a thud; the sound of a body hitting the floor. She immediately rolled to her side and off the bed, crawling quickly along the floor to Alex's crib. Her only thought was to grab her son and go. _Just get Alex. Just get Alex. Be quiet and he won't see you._ She rounded the bed and crawled directly into a set of heavy, black boots. She looked up and was greeted with more black, and leather straps and weapons and – _is that a metal arm?_ Hannah leapt to her feet and stumbled back a step, her eyes taking in the bizarre sight of the man in front of her.

He was glaring at her, but the gun he'd killed the two cops with hung at his side. Alex's crib was just past him. "Please," she murmured, "Please I won't tell anyone, I promise, just don't hurt my baby." She brought her eyes to his glaring ones. The intensity she saw in that piercing gaze made her stomach throb painfully. They were each silent for a moment and then he gave her a barely perceptible curt nod and turned to the side, giving her leave to pass him.

As afraid as she was to walk by him, she still launched forward, nearly tripping and falling again in her haste to get Alex. She grabbed the baby up swiftly, and his little panicked arms immediately gripped about her neck. He clung to her like an over-heated, trembling squirrel, burying his face in her neck, under the curtain-fall of her blonde hair. His sobs were somewhat muffled against her neck and Hannah gripped both arms around him and immediately made to run for the door to the hallway.

She _heard_ the man move before she felt him, the whirring of his arm was so loud in the sudden quiet of the bedroom. He grabbed her upper arm and stopped her forward motion, whirling her around to face him. She managed to keep her natural instinct to shriek down to a smaller squeak, but Alex let out a loud enough cry for the both of them.

Those eyes were on her again, though his sweep of chin length dark brown hair obscured a full view. He looked unhappy to be required to talk. "You can't leave alone," he said, as if he was fighting the urge to growl at her. She shook her head rapidly back and forth. "No, I can, please, let me go," she replied, her words nearly a whisper. She was painfully cognizant of how upset Alex was and she was filled with an urgent need to calm him down. _And escape, don't forget escape._

"You'll be killed within 30 minutes of leaving this building," he told her flatly, still not releasing her arm. "Why?" She asked plaintively, "Why kill me? I don't even know you! I didn't know them!" She gestured at the two dead men on the floor, trying not to look at them for fear she might throw-up. Hannah swallowed hard before continuing, "I swear to god, I have no idea where Steve is, I haven't seen him in two years! Please, you have to believe me!"

He released her arm abruptly. "I'm not looking for him," he told her brusquely, "They were Hydra," he pointed at the bodies, "They were sent for you and the boy. I came to stop them." Hannah blinked at him, edging one step backwards until his eyebrows came together at the movement and she froze in place. Alex was calmer now, no longer crying, just whining in a low-pitched way against her neck; she absent-mindedly kissed the side of his head. The man watching her followed her movements and holstered his gun immediately afterwards.

"Why?" She asked him, absolute confusion preventing her from asking anything further, "You don't want Steve, they did, so why bother coming here?"

"I failed my mission," he muttered, still studying her from behind his hair. "What mission?" She asked quietly.

"To kill Captain Steven Rogers," he replied. Hannah swallowed. "So he's alive?" She managed to say. The man nodded and she felt a peculiar sense of relief flow through her. "I remembered," the man continued, looking at her in narrow-eyed confusion for a second, his whole face contorting with the emotion. It was painful to watch, he looked afraid of the memory.

"I'm a monster," he said in a softer voice. Hannah's stomach roiled; his words were not comforting. "I went back, I was damaged. I went back to Retrieval, to be prepped, to be repaired, but the Retrieval team was not there, only the tech team and ground force," his voice was low and steady, but she felt her eyes drawn reflexively to his arm. It was fully metallic, likely robotic, completely amazing and completely terrifying all at once, and he was currently clenching and unclenching his metal fist.

"I remembered," he said again, his tone of voice drawing her eyes to his again, "Who I was before, who I am now, who I've been."

"I don't understand," she whispered and he shook his head. "They were beginning my repairs, and I heard, I heard them: they had located Captain Rogers' wife and child," he told her, looking at her expectantly, as if she held long-sought-after secrets, "I knew their orders. I couldn't allow it."

She felt her breath coming in and out in little fits and jags and swallowed hard at the lump in her throat. She wanted to correct him, tell him that she was not Steve's wife, and lie and tell him that Alex was not his child, but she didn't dare.

"They wanted to kill me, take Alex," she managed, a hard tone entering her voice. He nodded, his eyes drawn down from hers, to the side of Alex's little head, his golden blonde hair mixing in with pieces of her own similarly colored locks.

"I couldn't allow it," he repeated, his eyes moving back up to hers, "I remembered. He was my mission. But I was his friend."

Heavy silence hung in the room for a long moment. "Who are you?" She asked him, licking her lips nervously. He gave her a rather dead-eyed look. "I was no one, but before that, I was his friend," he told her, and then looked away. She realized he was saying something else in a voice so quiet it fell below a whisper, but she couldn't make it all out, something about " _end of the line_ ".

"What happens now?" She asked tentatively, terrified by this man's capability for swift violence and vulnerable fragility all wrapped into one.

"You need to leave," he said, his voice growing firmer, more certain. His eyes drifted down to the bags stacked on the floor, the ones she'd packed earlier. "We need to go, now," he looked back at her, an order in his voice. Hannah wanted to argue, but didn't, afraid of what he might do.

She simply nodded and immediately put Alex back in his crib. He was dozing and half asleep at this point and hardly protested. She turned back to the man, who was staring down at the dead men on the floor again, facing away from her. She reached a tentative hand out and touched the back of his metallic arm. His whole body stiffened before he rounded on her. Hannah stumbled back a step, nearly swallowing her tongue in her fright. _I should've known better, that was my fault, oh god why'd you surprise the guy built like the Terminator?_

"I-I'm sorry," she stammered out, "I just, I need to know who are you are – you said you're Steve's friend, please, tell me your name."

"James Buchanan Barnes, he called me," he muttered, his eyes looking away like he was embarrassed. Hannah's mind went completely blank for almost an entire minute. She stood there staring at him, her regular-person's brain scrambling to provide her with things to say, or ways to look, or methods of reaction. His eyes eventually moved back to her and he narrowed them slightly at the look he saw on hers.

"What?" He said roughly, and that startled her out of her shock. "Bucky," she blurted out, "Bucky Barnes." He nodded hesitantly at her. "You died a long time ago, my history teacher told me, everyone said so, it's just how it is," she babbled on and he gave her a look like she might be disgustingly stupid. "I am not dead," he responded, "I did not die."

"Obviously," she muttered, "I'm never dating anyone again – this is too much." He shot her a strange look but didn't speak. Somehow, hearing who he was made her feel slightly more at ease, and she began to move about the room quickly, avoiding looking at the bodies on the floor. She cracked her bedroom window open, for the cat – he would use the fire escape to go upstairs to the fifth floor. A woman lived up there, someone who was used to his visits whenever he managed to escape, and Hannah felt sure he'd find a home for now, until she was home again.

She had to believe that there was a normal life at the end of all this, it kept her moving when she might otherwise want to grab Alex and hide under the bed. Instead, she removed her cardigan and put on a t-shirt over her tank top, and then applied the baby Bjorn, before putting the cardigan back on. Absent-mindedly, she raked her hair up into a bun on top of her head and then put on the knapsack she'd packed earlier. She picked up her son and put him in the carrier, facing inwards, so his face pillowed against her sternum, and then she wrapped the cardigan closed over top of him.

Bucky Barnes, the man, whatever he called himself, stood watching her blankly the entire time. She bent at the knee and scooped up the diaper bag before walking down the hallway to the living room. She grabbed her phone and charger and stuffed them into her purse, and then grabbed the scrap of paper she'd written Clint Barton's phone number down on. The man grabbed her arm then and she looked up at him, eyes wide. His eyes were cutting around the room intensely.

"There are more coming, they are outside now," he told her shortly. She just stared at him, not certain what to do, and he turned and began to pull her away. She followed obediently. Outside her unit's door, he led her up the stairs instead of down them and that gave her a small tingle of fear; up felt far less safe than down. On the very top floor, he pushed open the door to the roof and dragged her onto it. It was dark out, and windy, and he pulled her along the gravelled roof top until they got near the far side of it.

"No!" She cried in a whisper, "Are you crazy? This is a roof! I have a baby!" He turned back to her, but she was spared the intensity of his gaze due to the darkness.

"You will not have to jump," he told her in flat tones. She felt relief flood her very bones, before he released her arm and instead spun around and scooped her up in his arms, bags, baby Bjorn'd baby, and all, and sprinted for the ledge of the roof, his muscles coiling and springing loose again as he jumped. She couldn't even scream she was so terrified, just made a whistling whining noise, clutching Alex to her chest uselessly. The man's feet thudded down quickly though and he was running again. She realized that he hadn't jumped off the roof – he jumped from her roof to the building next door; the buildings on her block were all relatively close together.

He jumped once more and then set her down abruptly on the third roof, not wasting a moment before he began to drag her towards the stairwell of that roof. Her legs were like jelly and she nearly collapsed. "Please," she panted, "I need a moment." He turned to her and then reached out and grabbed her shoulders and steered her to lean up against the stairwell's wall.

"Breathe," he demanded, "In through the nose, out through the mouth." She met his eyes in the dim light of the stairwell and nodded, breathing as he said. She looked away, down at Alex and was unsurprised to see him awake. His eyes were gigantic, but he didn't seem fearful, just a little shocked. She dug into a pocket of the diaper bag and retrieved his pacifier, tucking it into his mouth. He took it eagerly and lay his head against her chest, turning slightly so he could eye the large, dark man standing a foot in front of them.

"We have to keep going," he said, and she looked up from Alex to him, and saw that he was studying the baby as if he couldn't figure out what a baby was.

So she got moving and ran with James Buchanan Barnes into the night.


	3. Chapter 3

***** Enjoy! I OWN NOTHING – except Hannah and Alex *****

Hannah was discovering a lot of things tonight about the world around her, and staying silent around the metal-armed, fiercely grouchy James Barnes was one of them.

She also learned that she could only take out a certain amount of cash on her bank card at one ATM, but, if she went to multiple ATMs, she could easily drain her checking and her savings within minutes. Also credit cards - she drained them. She hadn't wanted to, but James insisted. She thought she should save room on them for a hotel or something, which he shot down immediately.

"They'll trace everything, we need to leave this area now," he'd grumbled, his eyes casting about. Hannah had nodded dumbly and stuffed the vast amounts of cash into her purse. She would normally feel like she was walking around with a neon sign above her head that flashed "ROB ME" by carrying so much cash, but even with a stolen hoodie over his giant metal arm, people avoided James, literally parting like the Red Sea for him on the sidewalk.

 _Besides, if you have any sign flashing, it's one that says "FUGITIVE",_ she thought wryly.

Hannah also learned that it's really easy for someone with a metal arm to steal a car. He made it look like nothing, and soon they were driving out of the city. As soon as they hit the highway he spoke. "Do you have your cell phone?" He asked. She nodded and he held his hand out immediately, keeping his metal one on the steering wheel. "I need it," he ordered her. She dug it out and handed it to him and he threw it out the window immediately, and then pulled a violent U-turn and started going the other way down the highway, back through the city. She gaped at him, open-mouthed.

"But why?" She finally managed to ask, and he didn't even look over at her. "They will trace it, they likely already are, and they will think we are going the other way," his explanation was harshly spoken and to the point, but she supposed she understood. Still, she mourned her phone. After a moment, the irony of that dawned on her and she couldn't keep the small, dry, laugh from escaping her throat.

"What?" He asked her abruptly and she leaned her head back against her seat and stared up at the roof of the car, one hand coming up to rest on Alex's head as he slept against her chest. "It's just funny," she explained to the roof, "I met Steve when he ran over my phone, and the phone you just destroyed was the replacement I bought back then."

He was silent and she sighed. Somewhere in Alexandria, he finally pulled off the road and he wove around the streets for a bit before pulling off the road in front of a fairly run-down looking building in a tired section of the city. She craned her neck to see out the window and discovered they were parked outside a hostel. "We can get a room here," he told her gruffly, "No credit cards." She thought it was brilliant, but likely dirty and unsafe. Alex snored against her chest and she sighed. _I guess it doesn't matter._

She watched James pull on a ball cap from the back seat and then he pointed at her. "Stay here, I will book the room, you two might be remembered, I will not," he directed her. She nodded faintly and sat back in the darkness of the car, watching him stride confidently into the building. She felt very tired and very weak all of a sudden and knew that too much had happened far too quickly, and she needed some time to deal.

She needed to figure out what the plan was. She doubted he had any real plan, and she needed to tell him about Clint. She was grateful beyond words for James' intrusion (she could not bring herself to call a grown man 'Bucky', and he didn't care either way) in her life, arriving in time to save her and Alex, for getting her away from the huge fall of danger that was about to drop onto her – but she was still afraid of him. He seemed unbalanced, broken, and in deep and serious need of some therapy.

He would keep her safe, but she wouldn't feel good about it forever – she had a feeling that Clint would have a more secure and calm solution. By the time she was laying Alex down on one of the blankets she'd packed for him, on one of the two tiny single beds in the hostel room that James had secured, she was feeling nearly faint with exhaustion. James was sitting on the floor, his back up against the door, just a couple of feet away. Hannah lay down next to Alex, wrapping an arm around him and hugging him to her chest and she watched James as he just sat there, gazing with hard eyes at nothing across the room.

He must have felt her gaze because he cut his eyes over to her. "Go to sleep," he told her quietly, "You need to rest and sleep." She nodded at him and he looked away.

"Thank you," she whispered after a moment, and he simply nodded once, not looking over. She closed her eyes then and slept.

When she woke in the morning, Alex was sitting up, pacifier in his mouth, leaning back against her stomach as he watched James. She lay on her side and watched her son stare at the man. Alex was typically a little fussy in the morning – he had a big appetite and liked to eat pretty much right away – but today he was simply fascinated by the metal armed man.

Hannah tilted her head and saw that James was regarding her son with a more subtle form of curiosity. "He resembles his father," James spoke without taking his eyes from Alex. Hannah sat up, pulling Alex onto her lap when she did. "He does," she answered simply. James looked away and Hannah leaned around the baby to snag the diaper bag. She wanted to give Alex a bottle, it was fastest and easiest, but they had no water.

"I need clean water," she said quietly, looking up at James, "For his bottle."

"They sell water at the front desk for drinking, in bottles," James explained, his tone remaining flat. She nodded and before she could make a move, he jumped to his feet and unlocked the door. "I will get some," he told her, casting a severe look her way, "Stay here." He left quickly and Hannah took the opportunity to lay Alex back and change his diaper. He started to fuss at her, his distraction in the form of James gone for the moment, and she tried to soothe him, but he was having none of it.

Grimly she soldiered on, changing the diaper and changing the baby into a long sleeved shirt and his overalls. She tried to sing to him, to get him to stop kicking his feet at her as she tried to put on his socks, but he was also having none of that. It was almost amusing the way he abruptly and immediately stopped fussing as soon as James re-entered the room, though. Alex's blue eyes grew large and wide and locked onto James. She was able to get his socks and little shoes on with no problem and then sit him up and run a comb through his hair.

She turned to James who thrust a water bottle at her. "Feed him," he told her, "Then we need to go." She mixed the bottle and handed it to Alex, who eagerly grabbed it and then scooted back to lean against her while he drank it. Her own stomach growled and James heard it, much to her embarrassment. "We will have to find food later," he told her, his voice completely unapologetic.

"That's fine," she murmured. Hannah looked down at Alex and stroked her hand over the top of his head. "Someone was coming to pick us up, someone we trusted, one of Steve's friends," she said, without looking up. Again she heard the noise of James coming before she felt it, as his arm shot out and grabbed one of hers, making her look up at him.

"Who?" He snapped, "Did you contact them from here? Did they betray you to Hydra before?" She pulled on her arm and he didn't immediately let go. "You're hurting my arm," she said as calmly as she could manage, "And you're scaring Alex." He let go immediately and turned away from them.

"Answer my questions," he spoke, facing the other side of the room.

"He _is_ trustworthy, he's an Avenger," she replied, rubbing her arm where his metal hand had just gripped her, "His name is Clint Barton, he's going to keep us somewhere safe." James didn't reply. Hannah shifted around and let Alex sit up on his own with the bottle as she climbed to her feet. She stood in front of James. "I need to phone him," she said, tilting her head to try and get him to look at her, "I'm so thankful for everything you've done, I really, really am, but I can't run forever, not with a baby, it's not good for him, or safe for him. I think Clint can offer us a safe place to hide, somewhere more stable, you know?"

James finally looked at her and for the first time she saw something painfully human in his eyes and it almost broke her heart. "Will you tell Captain Rogers? About what I've done?" He asked her, his tone bordering on hopeful for a moment. She nodded. "If I ever see Steve again, I will definitely tell him," she replied.

"You should also tell him that this is his son," James continued, his tone getting hard again, but in a non-threatening way. She realized he disapproved of her hiding Alex from Steve and felt a wash of shame. Her cheeks flaming, Hannah looked away. "I did what I thought was best for my son," she said, a touch indignantly.

"And what was easiest for yourself. The boy should know his father, the father should know his son," James sounded like he was reading a script, but she peeked up at his cutting eyes and saw the glint of humanity in them again.

"I _will_ tell him," she whispered.

"We need to leave," James said after a moment, "After, you can call Clint Barton."

Later, as they drove in another car, this one with a car seat in the back, which made Hannah very happy, she found herself overflowing with curiosity about James. "How did you not die?" She asked him, "Everyone knows you fell out of a speeding train down the edge of a mountain."

"I survived the fall because I had previously been subjected to experiments attempting to recreate Steve Rogers' transformation," he answered immediately and flatly, not looking over.

"Oh," she said quietly, staring out the window, "And your arm?" She could _hear_ the arm click and whir briefly, as if it were reacting to being mentioned. "To replace the one I lost," he answered shortly.

"Did it hurt?" She finally asked, after a long silence. He didn't answer at first, and she thought she should maybe clarify, because obviously a lot of things could have hurt: the fall, losing his real arm, replacing the arm - he wouldn't know which she was asking about it.

"It was agony," his words were like a rasp and Hannah swallowed on a dry throat.

"You became a hero," she told him a few minutes later, "In history books, in comics and movies, you've even a got a big section in that Captain America display at the Smithsonian – the only Howling Commando to give his life in service."

"I'm not a hero," he told her immediately, his tone much more harsh, "The hero fell from the train and the monster got to his feet again." She said nothing, but squeaked when he pulled the car over suddenly and lunged at her, grabbing her shoulders and pressing her up against the passenger door. " _I'm not a hero – I kill people,"_ he snarled at her, his face a ferocious, twisted thing, eyes darkened with rage, " _I have killed so many, without any remorse. I would have kept on killing."_

Hannah's breath was locked in her chest and her shoulders were beginning to throb where he gripped them, his large hands swallowing the tops of her arms. "I'm sorry," she managed to get out, her voice a shaking, weak thing, "Please, James, I'm sorry." Alex let out a bleat of dismay from the backseat and that seemed to shake the darkness loose in James' eyes and he released her abruptly, staring down at his hands like he couldn't believe what he'd just done.

Hannah sagged forward, her hands coming up to immediately cup her aching, throbbing shoulders. She could feel tears leaking out of her eyes from how badly it hurt. She looked up at James and he was sitting facing the windshield and nearly hyperventilating, she could see. "James," she began, tentatively, "It's alright, I'll be ok."

He cast her a wild-eyed look and shook his head, his eyes gone wide and pained, his face horrified. "I'm sorry," he blurted, his tone sounding like a real person for the first time since she'd met him, "I hurt you, I'm sorry." She blinked in surprise when he thrust his door open and bolted from the car, slamming the door closed behind him. Hannah sat stunned, as Alex made sad little meeps behind her.

 _Is he coming back?_ She wondered, completely uncertain about what to do next. She waited nearly an hour before she lifted herself across the center console and started the car. She adjusted the seat and the mirrors and slid her seatbelt on. She felt bad about leaving, she worried that he intended to come back and was just cooling off.

 _We can't sit in one place like this though, someone might notice, it's not safe._ Her mind was made up and she pushed the car into drive. She had no idea where to go. She was also shocked to discover that payphones appeared to be a thing of the past. No matter how many gas stations she drove by, she didn't see a single one.

About 30 minutes later she drove past a very large mall and decided to pull in on a whim. Climbing from the car in the parking garage she heard the familiar sounds of people and cars that heralded the mall and felt comforted.

Hannah was pleased that she had changed at the hostel (while James obediently turned his back to her) and was able to put the baby Bjorn on overtop of her long sleeved t-shirt easily. She lifted Alex from the car seat and plopped him in the carrier, facing outwards, and then put on her backpack, slung her purse on and put the diaper bag over her shoulder.

She brought the car keys with her when she left the parkade for the mall – even though she wasn't certain how long they would be able to use this car. It was stolen, they were unnaturally lucky to have found the keys in the vehicle, but she was terrified that she'd get pulled over and arrested. Of course leaving it parked in a parkade meant it could be tracked down as well, but she really couldn't handle the tenseness of driving around in it anymore. A mall offered the opportunity to blend into a crowd for a while, disappear for a bit, and if she was remembering correctly, malls had either pay phones or courtesy phones.

This mall was crowded, and it was blissful. Hannah made a beeline for a set of courtesy strollers near the entrance and quickly loaded all their gear and the baby into it. Her still-sore shoulders sagged in immediate relief; she had been feeling like a pack horse and it was nice to not be weighed down. Alex seemed pleased too, he began to kick his legs happily and sing in a loud off key way as she pushed him through the mall. Her mind was blank, but her stomach was hungry, so she headed for the food court.

After getting a plate of food from a bagel place, Hannah sat down wearily at a plastic booth in the food court and began to sip at her coffee. She tore off little pieces of bagel for Alex and watched him turn it into a mushy chunky mess. _I need to call Clint right after this,_ she thought, _I should probably call my parents too and tell them I'm alive._ She thought about her apartment, the state it had been left in, two murdered police officers inside, who were apparently also Hydra agents. She wasn't even certain who Hydra was, just flickers of vague mentions in WWII history books telling her that they were bad guys. _Supposed to be extinct bad guys though,_ she mused, taking a deep pull at her dark coffee, wondering if they were like the Nazis themselves, with small underground sects still surviving around the world.

 _They seemed really powerful though, how 'underground' could they be?_ Hannah wiped Alex's face with a napkin while he squirmed to get away and decided that it didn't matter. Regardless of their power, they wanted Steve, to hurt him, to kill her, to snatch their son – she needed help, and now that James had deserted them, she needed to get to Clint as soon as possible.


	4. Chapter 4

***** Enjoy! I OWN NOTHING – except Hannah and Alex *****

It didn't take her long to find the courtesy phones, there was a long bank of them by the fairly plush restroom section, which came equipped with a small 'quiet room' for mothers to breastfeed and change their babies. There was also a little play area for kids outside the quiet room, not to mention a separate section containing a full array of actual restroom stalls. Hannah dug out Clint's phone number and dialed. It seemed to ring forever, and just when she was about to cry in frustration and slam the handset back into the cradle, he picked up.

"What?" He snapped, angrily, and Hannah almost cried out in relief. "Oh god, thank you for picking up, Clint it's me, it's Hannah –" she began.

" _Where the hell are you?"_ His voice came loud and worried over the phone, " _Jesus Christ, everyone thinks you're dead!"_

"What? No, Clint listen, they came for me, Hydra –"

"I _know_ that, they killed those cops, right?"

"No! The cops _were_ Hydra, they came looking for Steve, then they were going to kill me and take Alex, and then James showed up and killed them –"

"James?"

"Yeah, um, Bucky? Bucky Barnes? He has a metal arm? He worked for Hydra before and was supposed to kill Steve, but he didn't and now he's a good guy sort of, but he's really messed up. Anyway, he heard them planning and he saved us and now I'm in Virginia and he freaked out and he left us –"

"Hannah, Hannah, calm down, slow down," Clint's voice immediately turned from worried to soothing and Hannah tried to focus, "Where are you? Where in Virginia?"

"Alexandria," she managed, feeling tears of relief pushing at the back of her eyes. Clint was obviously covering the phone, and she could hear faint muffled sounds of him speaking to someone. "We're coming," he said, when he returned to the line, "I want you to meet me somewhere, alright? Can you write something down?"

Hannah looked around and saw a crayon on a table next to her and snatched it up, before tearing a page out the phone book beneath the phone and writing out the instructions from Clint on it. "Are you sure? Are you really coming?" She pleaded, her heartbeat fluttering fast.

"I am, we are, please stay calm," he told her, his voice comforting and sturdy. Hannah hung up and breathed in relief, before looking down at Alex who was smiling at her. "We're gonna be ok, buddy," she told him quietly and he burbled happily and then farted. She rolled her eyes as he giggled in pleasure at the sound.

"Need a diaper change, hey?" She asked him and he giggled again. She pushed the stroller into the quiet room, which consisted of a large change table and two stalls, plus a rocking chair for feeding, she guessed. Hannah made short work of changing his diaper, and then used the washroom herself, keeping the door of the stall propped open so she could see Alex in his stroller, not caring if anyone walked into the mother's quiet room or not.

As Hannah was washing her hands at the sink she heard the door to the family restroom creak open behind her. She was just drying her hands with some paper towel from the dispenser near the sink when she looked into the mirror, and saw behind her the person who had entered the room.

It was a strange man, much bigger than her, definitely not a mother, and definitely without a child. For a moment their eyes caught in the reflection of the mirror and Hannah knew her gaze was wide and shiney with fear. For his part the mans gaze had a hard blankness to it that struck a deep shard of fear straight down her spine.

She whirled around to face him, her mind disjointedly throwing out a half-formed thought of evasion and escape. Instead, she turned just in time as he charged her, shoving her backwards over the sink and into the mirror. The back of Hannah's head cracked against the mirror brutally, splintering it into little pieces behind her; she could hear the harsh music of it as it pattered down onto the counter. She cried out, but his collision with her knocked most of the wind out of her lungs and her cry came out more like a grunt than anything else.

"No," she managed to croak, before he wrapped his hands around her throat. Her eyes couldn't see past him, but she knew Alex was behind him, in the stroller, and her son was beginning to cry in dismay again. The man's grip was tight and punishing but he didn't look like he was enjoying himself very much, more like it was a piece of necessary dirty work. "Please," she managed before he squeezed tighter and all her air was cut off.

"Sorry lady," he muttered, his breath stinking of stale coffee, "Nothin' personal, hail Hydra and all that." He grimaced and looked away, like he didn't enjoy having to strangle the pretty blonde woman struggling beneath his hands. Her own hands scrambled at the counter and closed around a chunk of mirror, slicing her fingers. She was seeing dark spots now and her chest was constricted abominably.

With her last bit of energy, she swung the shard of mirror up and slammed it into the side of his throat, which was open and fully exposed as he looked away from her. He let out a " _Gurk"_ of surprise and looked back down at her, his eyes opened wide. His hands finally released her and she began to immediately gasp and cough, the blessed air flowing into her lungs. She was sitting in the sink, her legs up and hanging off the counter, and he staggered back a step from her, allowing her to pull her legs up to her chest and then force them out at him. Both of her feet connected solidly in the center of his chest and he stumbled backwards, narrowly missing Alex's stroller.

The man careened backward through one of the bathroom stalls, his hands still working uselessly at trying to pull out the jagged shard. She had gotten it in deep though, and when he fell to his behind in the stall, the flow of blood from the wound was growing, and also coming out of his mouth. He looked up at her wonderingly, and then limply reached into his jacket, grabbing his gun. She had half a moment of utter panic, before she dove off the sink, her legs wobbling slightly as she threw herself at the stroller and Alex, covering him.

Her body tensed up, expecting a shot to follow and tear into her, but instead she heard only a gurgling sigh and the metallic thud as the gun fell to the floor. She turned over and saw the man was dead. Alex was crying, which finally broke through her adrenaline-laced fog, and she reached for him, but he screamed louder, cringing away from her. She touched her face and realized her attacker's blood was coating her skin there, likely having spurted out onto her without her even being aware of it.

The next few minutes felt like a dream. Hannah managed to lock the quiet room's door, preventing anyone else from entering. She proceeded to clean herself off and eventually had to yank her top off and grab a clean sweatshirt from her bag because her previously worn shirt was now covered with blood. She made Alex a bottle and he took it alright, but he seemed a little jumpy. _Please don't remember this,_ she pleaded with him silently, stroking his hair, _please don't let this affect you._

She would have done anything to shield him from all of this, but it was well out of her hands at this point. All she could do now was keep her son alive, and herself along with him. She went to the second sink and saw the ugly bruising starting on her throat. Her neck hurt like she had whiplash, and her throat hurt like she had a violent case of Strep, but she knew she was beyond lucky.

When she touched a hand to the back of her head, she was pleased there was no bleeding, although there was a goose egg forming from where he'd slammed her head back into the mirror. She dug through her bag for her toiletries and immediately pinned back her bangs, tied her hair back in a low ponytail, and then stuck on one of her thick yoga headbands, which covered up the front portion of her hair. When she pulled the hood up on her sweatshirt, you couldn't even tell she was blonde, which was what she wanted.

She moved back to the stroller and put the baby Bjorn back on, loaded a now full and sleepy Alex into it, and pulled a little knit cap over his head, to hide the blonde curls. She loaded on all their gear and made for the door, but then paused, looking back at the dead man on the floor of one of the stalls. His handgun lay next to him. Almost without thought, she bent, grabbed the gun, flicked the safety on, silently thanked her father for taking her to the gun range as a teenager, and then tucked the weapon into the back of her pants, layering her shirt and the bags back on top.

Out in the hallway, she moved quickly, not even bothering to go back into the mall, wondering if she had been caught on a camera in the mall and that was how they found her, or somehow through James, or the stolen car. _It could have been something as simple as a traffic camera_.

She took an exit door at the back of the restroom wing and wandered through back hallways of the mall, coming out in a loading bay. Hannah moved quietly and swiftly, not wanting to be caught, but wanting to get the hell away from the mall, and eventually she was out on the street. She pulled out the instructions Clint had given her and then started to jog, wanting to get some distance between herself and the place that had changed her from a normal mom to a murderer.

A couple blocks away, panting, she hailed a cab and managed to load everything in. "Where to, Miss?" The driver asked her disinterestedly. Hannah settled Alex on the seat next to her and glanced up at the driver. "The Alexandria Grand Hotel, please," she responded, trying very hard to sound like a regular mother traveling with her baby, and not a frantic woman who had just killed someone in self-defence. The cab began to move and Hannah lay back against the seat, Alex slumped into her side. This was all very out of routine for him, and she knew that the constant frights and shock couldn't be good for him, either.

She ran her fingers down the side of his capped head and he grew heavy against her as he napped. Hannah herself was growing tired and had to fight to keep from falling asleep. When the cab stopped, the driver had to tell her twice they had arrived.

"Oh, yes, of course, thank you," she murmured, handing him cash. She told him to keep the change and began to load everything back up again before climbing out to the street. The hotel entrance was just steps away, and the doorman held the door open for her, an understanding smile on his face. "Long flight, ma'am?" He asked her sympathetically, and she smiled wanly at him, nodding. _Of course, this is an airport hotel,_ she thought to herself.

Clint had told her to go to the front desk and tell them her husband had already checked them in over the phone and that she was there for a room key. He assured her that she wouldn't be asked for ID. _"And for godssake, no matter what, don't actually give them your real ID,"_ Clint had urged her over the phone.

The attendant behind the counter tapped away at his screen and then made a little tsking noise. Hannah's eyes darted to his in a panic, but he only shot her yet another sympathetic smile.

"Oh my, I'm sorry Mrs. Jones, the notes here say that you lost your luggage _and_ got mugged outside the airport? What a day! Do you need me to call the police?" He seemed to have genuine concern for her and she had to force herself to smile wearily back at him. _He's not a bad guy, to him you're a young wife and mother who has had a terrible, frightening travel experience,_ she warned herself.

"No please, we just need a room to rest until my husband arrives – I dealt with the police at the airport," she lied glibly and felt no guilt about it whatsoever. The attendant nodded and handed her a key. She signed the waiver he handed to her, a messy scribble where just the name 'Jones' was slightly visible, and then made her way to the elevator.

Clint assured her she'd be safe here, that he'd taken measures, that he knew how to do this, that he would be there by the following morning. She went up the elevator silently, listening as Alex snored lightly on her chest, the canned elevator music managing to lend a heavy dose of normal to the moment. When she reached the room, she was ready to collapse, but somehow managed to put everything down and lay Alex in a bed on the floor, made from pillows and a comforter. He never woke up, which told her more about how wrung out he was than anything else could have.

She locked all the locks on the door, and pulled the drapes tightly, before dragging the desk in the room to sit in front of the door, her neck twanging angrily the entire time. Afterwards, she stripped off all her clothing and stepped into the bathroom, leaving the door wide open. She ran a hot bath and dumped in lots of soap, before climbing in. She relaxed, letting the hot water massage her neck and throat, listening carefully for Alex.

She must have fallen asleep because when she found herself opening her eyes, the water was chilly. The soap she'd put in the water had dried like a film to her skin, and she climbed from the tub and took a long, steamy shower. This was a nice hotel, a very nice hotel, and she was treated to lovely shampoos and conditioner, soft delightful soaps, thick towels, and smooth lotions, fragrant face washes, plentiful mouthwash, and even a tooth brush and tooth paste. When she was completely clean, Hannah felt human again. She kept her hair wrapped up in a towel and when she walked out into the main room, Alex was sitting up in his little pillow bed, playing with a diaper he'd pulled out of the diaper bag on the ground, ripping it to pieces.

She picked him up and showered him with kisses until he was giggling and shrieking with delight. "I love you, buddy," she told him, kissing his forehead and his nose, "Like a crazy person." He reached up and honked her nose, chortling in satisfaction. She was finally feeling safe and the next few hours passed easily. She bathed Alex, fed him, ordered room service, set her boy up with some toys on the bed and then sat next to him, watching the news and feeding him little bits of her dinner as she drank in the events of the past two days via the news.

 _Mystery surrounds the case of Hannah Baker and her young son Alex. Thought to be the secret wife and child of Captain America, aka Steve Rogers, the two have disappeared. Earlier this morning, police found signs of violence in her home, the small apartment unit within the building which she and the Captain first met in, two years ago. Her door was left hanging open, and there was blood in her bedroom. Police aren't releasing any information at this point about whether they think any acts of violence were committed against this young mother and her son, or if Baker herself is the perpetrator of said violence._

"What?" She spoke aloud at that, "Idiots." Alex looked over at her and she shook her head. "They're idiots, sweetheart," she told him and he laughed before grabbing at a couple more french fries from her plate. When her parents came on screen next, Hannah slid to the foot of the bed in shock, leaning towards the screen with her mouth hanging open. Her mother's tearful voice filled the room.

" _We just want to know that our daughter and our grandson are safe," Mrs. Baker said, "Hannah if you're listening, we love you, and we want to help you, please call us."_

" _To the people who are holding our daughter, if someone is holding our daughter, please, she and Alex are innocents, wrapped up in a situation that they don't understand – we didn't even know about her situation with Steve Rogers, she can't have known what she was getting into," Mr. Baker's voice was gruff but emotional._

Hannah flicked the TV off then and put her head in her hands. After a moment, listening to Alex babble to his toys in the background, she finally climbed off the bed and walked towards the phone, picking it up and preparing to call her parents. She paused halfway through dialing and hung up. _No,_ she thought, _no I can't, of course their lines are being watched or listened to._ Images of the bathroom attack began to assault her, and she shuddered. The phone hung up noisily, and Hannah returned to the bed to play with her son.

She felt awful for her parents' worry, but knew that she had to focus on Alex, and herself, on staying alive and waiting for Clint. At this point, waiting for Clint had become a nearly mythical event inside her head. She felt like she had always been waiting for him, and always would be waiting for him.

Later that night, as she lay in the dark, her body curled around Alex's, she thought about James, wondered where he was, if he was alright – she oddly missed his sullen silences and the heavy sense of security he offered. Hannah felt her heart going out to him; he was such a lonely, tragic figure.

She also thought about Steve, wondered if he'd heard about her, if he knew what was happening, if he cared. It was hard to actually miss Steve, it had been so long, and she'd really hardly known him to begin with, although she felt fairly certain, that they truly _had_ a wonderful connection back then. _Shame he turned out to be a superhero,_ she thought drowsily, drifting off to sleep.


	5. Chapter 5

***** Enjoy! I OWN NOTHING – except Hannah and Alex *****

Hannah was antsy the next morning, sitting on the edge of the bed and just waiting. Everything was packed up, Alex was sitting on the bed watching cartoons, something she hardly ever allowed him to do, and she had the dead man's gun in her lap, though the safety was still on.

She had woken just after dawn, and even though they'd both eaten, and she'd had at least two cups of coffee, she was still feeling uneasy. It felt like something _had_ to go wrong – she was so close to being safe. She had showered again, enjoying the luxury products, and then took the extra effort to blow dry her hair, something she never had the ability to do anymore at home because she was always running short on time. It left her hair looking thick and shiny, a healthy golden fall around her shoulders and face.

Alex had spent the past twelve hours or so in one place, this hotel room, and he seemed back to normal, although he had been asking for the cat over and over again, which made Hannah sad. When a knock sounded at the door, her heart slammed up into her throat and Hannah lurched to her feet. She moved to the door and climbed on the desk that she was keeping there, before looking out the peephole. It was Clint and he had a man with him that she didn't recognize. That made her wary almost instantly.

"One moment!" She called through the door, working to pull the desk out of the way. When it was moved, she turned the safety off on the gun, and then unlocked the door, pulling it open and aiming the weapon at the men standing outside.

"Who is he?" She asked quickly, her tone harsh. Clint seemed surprised, and his eyes went to the lurid bruising on her throat, making his brow draw down. "What is that? Who did that?" He asked immediately, his voice angry, nodding his chin at her neck.

"Someone attacked me at the mall, he tried to kill me, I stabbed him with a piece of glass," she replied, "Now tell me who this guy is, Clint - bringing a stranger wasn't part of the plan." Clint nodded at her words.

"I'm a friend of Steve's," the handsome black man said, "My name is Sam Wilson." She swallowed and there was a distinct tremor in her hand. Clint reached out gently and removed the gun from her weakening grip and he handed it to Sam immediately. Hannah stepped towards Clint, a relative stranger, yes, but still the closest thing to a friend she had right now, and he pulled her into a tentative hug, which she returned gladly. She began to cry and he backed her into the hotel room, Sam following and shutting the door. They stood in the little hallway of the hotel room entrance, the hug from Clint shifting into him standing with an arm around her as she wiped her tears away.

"I-I'm sorry, god I'm such a mess, I'm sorry Clint, for making you come here," she said, tears still weighing down her voice. He shook his head and stepped away from her, holding her at arms-length for a moment. He ran a hand gently down the horribly bruised side of her neck. "Obviously you need my help, though it sounds like you've done alright on your own... really? A piece of glass?" He reassured her with his flippancy. She laughed then, a watery sound, but genuine, and nodded before she stepped away, gesturing into the bedroom portion of the room.

"This is Alex," she told them, stepping up next to the bed. Alex was torn between growing suddenly shy of the newcomers and still being interested by the rarely-seen cartoons, his wide blue eyes kept darting over to the two men and then back to the TV screen.

"Holy shit," Sam said in a quiet voice, before immediately looking ashamed and hurrying on in a much higher pitched, obviously for the baby, voice, "I mean, uh, holy crap." Hannah laughed at that. "He doesn't understand," she told him, and he shook his head, his eyes locked on Alex.

"Steve's his father," Sam Wilson said, his voice stating a fact, not asking a question. Her posture stiffened and she opened her mouth to respond, before closing it again, not sure what to say. Clint was gazing in disbelief at her son as well. "You can't deny it," he told her, "The resemblance is uncanny." Hannah sighed and reached down for the TV remote, turning the television off. She scooped Alex up off the bed before he could fuss too much and took a step towards the men.

"This is Alex," she told them, "Buddy, this is Clint and Sam." Alex regarded them with wide, solemn eyes, before turning to bury his face in her shoulder.

"You never told Steve," Clint said, shooting an eyebrow up as he looked at her, "Why?"

"For his safety, for Alex's safety!" She replied indignantly, "I wanted him to live a normal life, a safe life, away from the shit that's fallen down on us the past couple of days."

"That obviously didn't work," Clint argued, watching as Sam stuck a finger out towards Alex, tickling a chubby little cheek. Hannah huffed out a breath. "It's not _my_ fault that everything fell apart, that was on you people, on your organization, I was just living my life," she defended herself, "If anyone has failed here it's all of you, and SHIELD."

"I had nothing to do with anything, I just came along for the ride, to help out Steve," Sam said in a sing song voice as he chucked Alex under the chin. He was rewarded with a big gummy smile from the boy.

"Jesus, Hannah, didn't you listen? I told you to get out before it got serious, I thought you listened, though it was hard to tell - you can be very hostile when you -," Clint was lecturing her now and she glared at him darkly. "Oh, he's pissing Mommy off," Sam whispered to Alex in a silly voice, making the baby burble out a little giggle - even his baby-laughter was reminiscent of Steve's generally sunny disposition and they all paused to stare at Alex in wonderment.

"Does Steve know you're here?" She finally asked carefully, looking between the two of them. Clint looked very serious now, obviously very upset by her prior words regarding SHIELD's failures, and he shook his head before answering. "No, he was injured, he's recovering somewhere safe," he told her, turning away and picking up her packed bags, "We need to go, get you two somewhere safe, and then we can talk more about all of this." Hannah nodded and followed the two of them out of the room, happy that she only had to carry Alex, relieved that she had comrades again, and, as was becoming her new normal, fearful of what lay ahead.

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8 hours later and the SUV they were driving in arrived in front of a fairly simple looking farm house. It was just her, Alex, and Clint now. Sam had apparently only come along as back-up for part of the journey, in case things got "rough and out of hand", as Sam put it. Hannah liked him, he seemed like a normal guy, and he was clearly enamored with Alex, which was always a sure-fire way to win a place in her heart. _Steve has great friends,_ she though to herself then, watching as Sam pretended to eat Alex's feet, causing the baby to laugh shrilly, _Maybe I should have trusted them all those years ago._ Her heart gave a little pang at the thought, the familiar "What Could Have Been" timeline floating up in her mind, reminding her, especially now in light of the fact that Steve's inner circle was in fact comprised of really good people, not dead machines, that she could have stayed with him. They could have grown that spark they shared. _We could have raised Alex together._

Hannah sighed in exhaustion, her thoughts circling back to Sam as Clint turned the SUV off in front of the farmhouse. _When did he leave? Was it the bus station? No, no, it was the train station, right?_ They had driven out of Virginia, taken 3 or 4 different buses, plus two trains, driven some more, and then taken a small plane, flown by Clint, to a very rural airport. He had a vehicle waiting there and they drove down bumping dirt roads after that.

"Where are we?" She asked softly, and groggily, climbing out of the backseat, a completely knocked out Alex heavy in her arms. Clint glanced over at her as he grabbed her bags, his face hesitant. "This is my house," he said quietly. She stared at him, uncomprehending for a moment. "My wife, my kids, they live here, they have for years," he continued, leading her towards the broad front stairs, "No one knows they're here, no one knows they exist, no one, not even Steve, or the Avengers. This was part of the deal for me to join SHIELD – they were left completely off the record."

She stopped walking then, balking at the bottom of the stairs. He paused halfway up and turned to her, the setting sun casting pink light on his face. "Why did you bring me here, then?" She asked him, feeling like she was being given something she didn't deserve, "This is a risk, Clint, they're hunting me."

He shook his head. "They'll never find you here, I promise you that," he said in a steady voice, "Come inside." She glanced down at Alex and pressed a kiss to his head, before nodding and stepping inside. She looked around in wonder. If you Googled 'family farmhouse' pictures of this home would come up. Everything was homey and comfortable, including the sound of children's thundering footsteps and their squeals of "Daddy! Daddy!" She stood back, in the shadow of the front door's entrance-way, and watched Clint's son and daughter hug him, watched his lovely, petite wife hug and kiss him, before she turned to Hannah.

A broad smile split her face, a genuine, warm look. "Hi, my name is Laura," she said, approaching with her hand extended. Hannah freed a hand from beneath Alex and shook. "Hannah," she replied, and then gestured at Alex, still sleeping heavily, "This is Alex."

"He's a sweetie," Laura said, peering down at his sleeping face, "Come in, come in." Clint dropped her bags by the entrance and then he disappeared with his two kids further into the house, while Laura led Hannah over to a couch. "Clint only told me a little bit about what's going on, but I gather you two are in some trouble because of Steve?" Laura said easily, sitting down next to Hannah on the couch. Hannah nodded, feeling unaccountably shy all of a sudden.

"I am so, so sorry, to intrude, I never thought Clint meant for us to come here, that _here_ even existed," Hannah began, her words tumbling over each other earnestly. Laura shook her head. "Don't worry about it, you have a baby, you needed a safe place to stay, I would never turn you away," Laura comforted her, "Besides, Clint can act like a hard-ass all he wants, but he's a great big softie when it comes to kids." Hannah let out a nervous chuckle and glanced down at Alex again. When she looked up, she could see Laura staring at her neck, at the vivid bruising and injury there.

"Look, there is a lot we all could talk about right now, but I think the best thing to do would be to get you two into your room, and into bed," Laura's voice was even softer now and Hannah sagged in relief.

"Thank you, thank you so much," she said over and over again as Laura helped her get her bags up the pleasantly creaky stairs to the second floor. She pushed into what had to be a guest room, with a little ensuite bathroom, and Hannah smiled at the playpen set up at the foot of the cozy double bed.

"Oh god, thank you," Hannah blurted out, finally smiling at Laura, "It'll be so nice to sleep without worrying about rolling on him." Laura laughed, a very pleasant sound, and pointed out a few amenities before leaving them. Hannah made quick work of changing Alex and laying him in the playpen. She proceeded to open the bedroom window, a light, sweet-smelling breeze blowing in on the early night air. She changed out of her clothes, into the shorts and t-shirt pajama set she'd brought for herself, and lay on the bed. This was even better than the hotel room. She felt very safe here, like she was in another dimension or something. It was very unexpected, and very welcome, and very…

Hannah fell asleep.

… … … … … … … … … … … .. … … … … … … .. … .. … … … … … … … … … … … … … … … … … … … … … … … … … … … … …

Laura was waiting in the kitchen for her the next morning, stirring up a giant pot of porridge. Her kids were zipping around in the yard outside. In the distance Hannah could hear something that sounded like a mower going. "Morning," Hannah said quietly, smiling at Laura. Laura smiled back. "Good morning," she replied kindly, before walking over and scooping up Alex from Hannah's arms.

Hannah froze for a moment, uncertain with how he might react, but Alex just smiled at Laura and cried, "Hi! Hi! Kitty?"

"Grab some coffee, I'll get him settled," Laura offered. Hannah nodded gratefully and moved to the other side of the kitchen. She found cream and sugar on the counter next to the carafe of coffee and a little row of hanging mugs. She began to mix it all together, watching as Laura plopped Alex into a high chair and tucked a bib around his neck expertly before giving him a plastic dish of sweetened porridge and a sippy cup of juice. By the time Hannah came to sit next to Alex at the table, his entire face and head were covered in porridge, but he was happy.

Laura set another bowl down in front of Hannah before taking a seat across the table from her. "I hope you don't mind, but I couldn't wait to talk to you today so I grilled Clint for information last night," Laura opened matter-of-factly, "You don't know me at all, but now I pretty much know everything about you that Clint knows." Hannah surprised herself by laughing.

"I guess that's fair, he spent all day yesterday, him and Sam, grilling me about every last thing that has happened since SHIELD fell," Hannah told her. She felt drugged with calm; the sound of Laura's children laughing outside was soothing her more than she thought possible.

"You know that Sam is going to tell Steve you're here today, right?" Laura told her carefully, tilting her head to watch Hannah's reaction. Hannah wilted the slightest bit and stared down at her coffee. "I suppose that's best," Hannah muttered, "I guess I'll have to face the music."

"Oh, no one is telling him about Alex," Laura interjected seriously, laying a hand on the table between them, "I think it's been decided that's absolutely your job." Hannah licked her lips, wondering why she felt guilty, after almost two years of feeling certain that not telling Steve was the absolute right choice.

"Between you and me, I likely would've done the same thing," Laura confided, turning to look out the window, "But we'd already had our son by the time Clint joined SHIELD."

"Was it hard?" Hannah asked awkwardly, "Giving everything up, leaving your life behind to hide?" Laura smiled gently and shook her head, and then shrugged a little. "Well, at first it was a struggle, I missed my parents, but we've managed to make it work, seeing them in neutral places a couple times a year," Laura explained, "We are isolated out here, but I love the farm, I grew up on a farm, so going without things like computers and cell phones isn't a stretch for me, and the kids don't know any different. Marrying Clint and moving into obscurity went hand in hand."

Hannah scooped up a few mouthfuls of her porridge, enjoying the thick sweetness of it. She didn't know the first thing about farming, and she hated insects, so she knew this would certainly never work for her. _And no computers? No Netflix? No cell phones?_ She thought in mild horror, certain she could never handle the loss of those things. Alex crowed happily from his seat then, upending his nearly empty bowl on top of his head, and she sighed, taking the bowl away and smiling helplessly at him.

"I could do it for Alex," Hannah said, almost without thinking, "But honestly, Steve doesn't mean anything to me, you know? It was so long ago, and so brief, the only real and lasting thing to come out of it is Alex."

"Isn't Alex enough reason to go through with it?"

"To marry Steve? Are you kidding? I can't marry a near stranger just because we share a kid!"

Laura laughed. "No one's suggesting you marry Steve, in fact I would recommend that if you two ever do decide to take anything anywhere, that you do it slowly and carefully," Laura explained, "But I meant more, this life, for Alex's safety, that's enough, right?"

"You don't think I'll ever get to go back to my regular life, do you?" Hannah asked, sadly. Laura sighed and shook her head.

"I'm no expert, I'm really not, but I asked Clint the same thing and he really doesn't seem to think so," Laura told her quietly. Hannah swallowed. "I've got $5000 cash in my purse upstairs, how does that support a secret life for Alex and me for the rest of our lives?" She asked reasonably. Laura shrugged, a half smile on her face.

"Sounds like something you'll need to discuss with Steve," Laura answered. Hannah sighed. "And when will that be?" Hannah asked.

"Probably tomorrow," Clint's voice came from behind her and Hannah jumped about a foot. "Sorry," he apologized, "Laura's always saying I need to walk heavier at home."

"Leave the assassin shit at the office, I always say," Laura said laughing. She got up to embrace her husband and Hannah looked away. A small childish part of her wanted to stay here in the Bartons' care forever, safe and protected and understood. The larger part of her was still flinching at every noise and wanted nothing more but to grab Alex and hide in a cave to keep him safe.

She spent the rest of the day not doing very much of anything – she brought Alex outside, where Clint's kids had a field day playing with him in the wavy grasses out front of the house. She took a nap in a hammock when Laura insisted it was alright. Alex was filthy and exhausted by dinner and kept falling asleep in his food, and Hannah herself found the fresh air and lack of stress exhilarating and she was ready to crash as soon as the sun began to set.

When she lay in bed that night, listening to the far off murmurs of Clint and his wife talking downstairs, and the nearby whistle of Alex snoring, Hannah tried to mentally prep herself for seeing Steve again. For explaining to him that he had a son. A son she had knowingly, and purposefully, hidden from him. Her stomach tightened in anxiety at the thought.

She had a fitful sleep that night, and by the next morning, she was so tired that she could hardly function. Laura and Clint took pity on her and Laura offered to load Alex into his baby Bjorn and take him out berry picking with her kids, at the back of the property – a little swell of nervousness rose in Hannah's stomach, but she trusted the Barton's, she had to, and after an encouraging smile from Clint, she nodded.

When the family had left, she was in the house alone. It was relaxing but also strange. Her muscles ached and she went upstairs, deciding that she needed to take a long, hot shower to loosen them up. When she'd stripped down in the bathroom, she paused in front of the mirror and winced at the sight of her skin. It was no wonder she was so sore, and no wonder Clint and Laura kept glancing at her in worry. Her neck and throat were a vivid sunrise of bruises ranging from black to blue to purple to red to pinks. She had large disturbing hand-shaped bruising on each shoulder as well, from when James had grabbed her, as well as bruising on her upper arms as a result of James and the cops each grabbing her there.

She was transfixed by the battered sight of all the bruises and shook her head. The shower was needed, and she spent a good long time under the hot spray, letting the water beat down on her next and shoulders, drumming steadily onto her head so all she could hear was the comforting shushing of the water. Afterwards, she stepped out and brushed her teeth before winding her damp hair up into a towel and wrapping another about her body. She rubbed the fog off the mirror and saw that her skin was pink and flushed and clean, but still littered with the angry bruises.

 _Some things a long shower just can't wash away,_ she thought in chagrin. She stepped out into her bedroom, and began to dig through the little pile of clothes that Laura had provided her with, when there was a knock on her door.

"I'll just be one minute!" She called back, but the door pushed open immediately and there stood Steve.


	6. Chapter 6

***** Enjoy! I OWN NOTHING – except Hannah and Alex *****

"Hannah, oh my god," Steve murmured, stepping into the room. His eyes darted from her face so quickly that she hardly got to meet his eyes. His gaze locked onto the bruising that covered her like a large paint splatter. She couldn't think of a thing to say. Any pre-rehearsed speeches that she gone over in the shower flew from her head. She just stared at him, wide eyed and with her mouth hanging open slightly. He looked good, beat to hell, but good. He was dressed simply, a t-shirt, jeans, and his hair was shorter than she remembered – a far more time-appropriate style. She was struck with a sudden desire to run her fingers through it, maybe scratch her nails along his scalp – _I wonder if he'd still make that same noise if I did that, and then dragged my fingers down his neck and…_

"Hannah!" Steve said loudly, tilting his head to get her attention, "Are you listening?" She blinked rapidly and felt her face heat. "Uh, yeah, I am, sorry," she said rapidly, feeling her cheeks and ears burn. _Get a hold of yourself, you've been in front of him less than 60 seconds and you're already imagining things you shouldn't be!_ She scolded herself and then gave him an unsteady smile.

"What happened to you? Who did this to you?" He asked, taking a step closer, they were each standing on opposite sides of the bed now and Hannah swallowed at the intensity in his voice, the anger. She didn't thing she currently had the wits to even _begin_ telling him about the past couple of days, at least not properly.

"A lot of people," she finally replied simply. Steve's face went through a cycle of emotions: despair, guilt, anger, and finally shame, heavy shame.

"I never knew that this would happen, that this _could_ happen, you have to believe me," he told her earnestly, his eyes pained as he met hers. Hannah clenched her jaw and nodded stiffly. The tight movement made her neck hurt and she winced slightly, which only hurt more and she brought a hand up to her neck. She realized she was in a towel then and abruptly turned away from him.

"Oh my god!" She cried in dismay, "I'm in a towel - Steve get out!" He muttered immediate apologies and stumbled quickly out of the room, shutting the door behind himself. Hannah stood panting by the bathroom door, embarrassed, and began to paw through the pile of clothes again, swiftly selecting a t-shirt and jeans, cramming herself into them as quickly as she could. She took the wet towel from her hair, and ran her fingers through the sodden strands before deciding to just leave them loose – the idea of brushing her hair right now made her feel stressed out.

"You can come in again," she called to the door, and Steve slowly pushed it open, sticking his head in first cautiously, as if it might be a trick. She sat on the bed and gestured at a chair just past the playpen. "Please have a seat," she told him, and he dropped down into it quickly. "Hannah," he began again, staring down at his hands for a moment before looking up at her, "A lot has happened in the past week, I can't go into all of it, but please believe me when I say that I never once thought this might happen to you – that you'd get dragged into it." He bounced to his feet, apparently unable to sit still, and he began to pace.

"I should've set something up for you years ago – a safety net, a back-up plan, something – I had all of SHIELD at my disposal and I let this happen," he said despondently.

"Steve," she cut him off, the strength in her own voice surprising her, "How could you have known? Besides, SHIELD fell, that's where this all started – if you had me wrapped up in SHIELD beforehand, then those Hydra bastards would've found us a lot sooner."

He stared at her, looking like he didn't believe her. "I hate SHIELD," she told him, "But, Steve, I don't hate you, I don't blame you – I… don't regret you." He looked surprised and then charmingly befuddled as the slightest flush crossed his cheekbones again. Hannah stared at him, at the blush she had once found so utterly fascinating on him, and wished things could be as simple as they were a couple years ago.

"I've thought about you a lot," he told her haltingly, moving to sit back down in the chair again. He tilted his head and looked over at her, a small somewhat tentative smile on his face, "Don't suppose you've thought much about me?" Hannah couldn't keep her laugh from escaping. She had thought about Steve every single day, every single time she looked at her son. She thought about Steve constantly whether she wanted to or not – she was hostage to her memories of him. Hannah started to laugh harder, pressing her hands into her face as she laughed, growing almost hysterical.

"Oh my god! You have no idea!" She laughed even harder and then realized she was crying, " _No idea!_ " She was crying hard now, and after a moment the bed dipped heavily as he sat down next to her and pulled her into his side, into a hug. He pressed his cheek to the top of her head as she hysterically laugh-cried into her hands.

"I missed you, too," he told her quietly. Hannah suddenly jerked away from him, climbing to her feet and stumbling a step back, into the playpen. She steadied herself and stared at him in disbelief. "Jesus Christ, Steve – you think I'm coming on to you? That I want to get back together, like right now?" She was nearly yelling, "I almost died like 3 or 4 times in the past couple of days, my _son_ was almost _taken_ from me!" She pointed a finger at him and swallowed hard.

"You think I thought about you romantically? Holy shit…" She turned away and gripped the playpen in both hands, her fingers wrapping around the top edge of it, tightly. The room was perfectly silent. _Breathe,_ she could hear James in her head, _in through the nose, out through the mouth._ Hannah clenched the playpen in her hands and obeyed James' instructions.

"You have a son?" Steve asked quietly, after a moment of silence, and Hannah flinched. _Oh shit, I didn't mean to say that, I lost my cool, oh shit._ "Yes," she replied in a near whisper, not turning around, knowing if he saw her face right now he'd immediately know the truth.

"It's only been two years, he must be a baby… you were running with a baby? Oh god, I'm sorry, Hannah, your baby, I – I didn't know…" Steve began, the guilt so heavy in his tone that his voice was nearly cracking. This was it, the moment to tell him, the perfect segue to reveal the truth... but she didn't say anything, she didn't know how to tell him. Thankfully, downstairs, she could hear the Barton's come in the door, and knew that Alex would be with them. _Ok, here we go, breathe in and out, turn around, and go downstairs, that buys you a couple of minutes._

"Stay here," she said, turning suddenly and pointing at him. He nodded warily, but didn't move. Hannah left the room and marched down the stairs. Laura was standing in the living room, holding Alex and had heard her coming. "He's here," Laura said quietly, handing over Alex. Hannah nodded and replied, "I know."

She glanced past Laura to Clint, who was sitting in the kitchen. He gave her a tight-lipped look, and nodded at her once, as if to say good luck.

"Mama, kitty?" Alex asked her, pulling at her hair lightly as she trudged back up the stairs. She showered his face with kisses and he giggled. His presence made this easier and yet somehow infinitely more difficult; as always, Alex was a constant reminder of the truth, of the enormous secret she had tried so hard to keep.

Taking a deep breath, she pushed open the bedroom door and stepped inside the room. Steve was sitting on the bed, right where she'd left him, staring down at the floor, his elbows resting on his knees, his hands gripping one another. He turned to look up at her when he heard them enter, an expectant smile on his face as he seemed to have anticipated that she'd be bringing the baby upstairs. To his credit, Hannah noted that he seemed genuinely pleased at the prospect of meeting her child.

His smile froze the second he locked his eyes on Alex's face. Steve's breath halted in a soft choking noise, and his face went through a rapid series of shocked expressions, before settling on completely and totally dumbfounded. Alex for his part seemed relatively calm with this new stranger sitting on the bed. Hannah was happy for the familiar weight of her boy in her arms, and one hand stroked the back of his sunny curls as she eyed Steve carefully.

"Kitty, Mama?" Alex asked again, pressing his nose against her face before turning back to regard Steve, who was still sitting stunned. Hannah knew that Steve saw the truth, saw the age of the boy and knew. Saw the boy himself and just _knew._

"This is Alex," she said softly, taking one step towards Steve and stopping when Steve leapt to his feet and backed away from her, to the other side of the bed. He moved quickly, like he couldn't handle the truth being so close to his face.

"Steve…" she said a moment later, as Alex began to squirm restlessly in her arms. She grabbed a pacifier and a toy of his and plopped him down on the bed. It was almost time for him to nap, so after casting one slightly wary look over at Steve, and deciding that the strange man wasn't a threat, Alex lay on his side on the bed and began to lazily poke at his toy, the soother plugged into his mouth.

"Steve?" She tried again, after an awkward couple of minutes of silence and baby-watching had passed. He hadn't moved since retreating away, he only stared at Alex, completely in shock.

"He's… he's…" Steve finally spoke, saying the word so quietly it was almost impossible to hear him, not looking away from Alex. By now the baby had fallen asleep. Hannah smiled gently at her son as she bent to take the toy from his limp little hand. She brushed a kiss to the side of his head and stood up, bending her head to look in Steve's eyes.

"He's yours, Steve," she told him carefully, quietly, "This is Alex, your son." She thought that any other man would likely have fainted or fled at this point, so great was Steve's shock, but his super-stamina, or _something_ , kept him there and on his feet, though he swayed slightly.

Steve looked at her and then down at Alex and then sat on the far edge of the bed gently, taking care not to disturb Alex's slumber. Hannah felt her heart clench briefly at that - that Steve was taking such care despite the fact that his mind was likely either completely blank or absolutely racing.

He was staring at his son, who was laying on his side, facing Steve, soother half in his mouth, curls brushing his neck and forehead, his little cheeks still ruddy from being outdoors – to Hannah, her son looked beautiful, like a little angel. Steve stared at him like he was a confusing puzzle and not a baby. Tentatively, he reached one large hand out and just lightly touched Alex's foot with the tips of his fingers, almost as if to test if Alex was real, before resting his hand on top of Alex's foot softly. Steve's eyebrows began to lift slightly, and his facial muscles loosened a bit as well.

She let out a breath when some of the color started to return to his face. He began to breathe normally, and so did Hannah. _Ok, good, so he didn't have a heart attack, thank god._ She was waiting for a smile, a nod, a word of pleasure, anything beyond just resting his hand on Alex's foot. _Oh crap, what if he's pissed? What if he never wanted kids and I've just dropped a toddler in his lap. He's Captain America, he should love kids, right? But he's also just a guy, maybe he hates them._ Hannah couldn't stop arguing with herself as she watched Steve watch Alex, not removing his hand.

"How could you?" Steve finally murmured quietly, his voice deeply unhappy.

"Excuse me?" She blurted, shocked that those words, _those_ , were the first phrase he had uttered about his newfound fatherhood. Steve didn't lift his head, wouldn't look at her, only gave Alex's foot a soft, gentle squeeze before pulling his hand back. He got to his own feet in one quick, fluid movement and strode away from the bed, to the window. He stared through the gauzy curtains, and Hannah felt dread tightening in her chest. _Anything that comes is understandable, be prepared,_ she tried to warn herself.

"How could you keep him from me?" Steve spoke again, his voice low, still respecting Alex's slumber, despite his obvious distress. Hannah felt her own posture tightening anxiously at the tense set of Steve shoulders and back; they were stiff and unyielding, and mostly, unwelcoming.

"All this time, Hannah, _all this time,_ and you couldn't tell me?" He spoke with such complete hurt and borderline dislike in his voice that Hannah felt her stomach roll slightly. She didn't know how best to respond, because he had a point, she could see that now, obviously, with the hindsight that the past few days had provided her.

"You couldn't tell me?" He said a little more loudly, turning around now to face her. His brows were drawn together and she immediately absorbed the emotion rolling off of him in waves: disappointment, anger, hurt, betrayal. "I would have been there for you, for both of you," he shot at her quietly, his voice growing more and more icy, "I would have done _anything_ for the two of you, _anything_ to keep you safe. This is my son, Hannah, and you couldn't be bothered to tell me?"

She rose to her feet and took a step towards him, opening her mouth to respond but his brows locked down together, real anger rippling over his typically good-natured face. "Save it," he told her brusquely, and then charged past her, opening the door and shutting it softly behind himself. Hannah bit her lip, hard, and could feel the tightness in her chest getting more and more intense, adding a pressure to her eyes, where it felt like a waterfall was waiting to unleash itself.

Part of her was fully aware that she needed to go after him. She needed to explain, as best as she could. She needed to apologize for his lost time with Alex. Apologize for hurting him. She had to tell him that she never did any of it to hurt him. Everything, every last ounce of herself from the moment the pee stick showed a pink plus sign, had been for Alex.

Instead she sank back down onto the bed in exhaustion, lowering herself slowly to lay next to Alex's warm little body, curling herself around him again, inhaling the scent of the fresh air and sunshine on his skin. She cupped a hand over his forehead and began running her fingers through his mussy hair.

She jumped about a foot when she heard yelling outside and glanced quickly down at Alex to see if she'd woken him up. He shifted slightly but continued to sleep, and Hannah slid off the bed and moved towards the window. Steve was pacing angrily back and forth near where the vehicles were parked, his hands on his hips.

"You couldn't tell me!? How much more don't I know? How many secrets are there? What is it with people and their secrets? _How could you not tell me?"_ Steve was yelling, and Hannah pressed her lips together, thinking, for one moment, that he was actually yelling at her. She realized he wasn't when Clint responded.

"I only just found out myself, Cap," Clint's tone was reasonable, "You've been here now, you know _my_ secret; can you honestly say you think I was keeping your _kid_ from you?" Steve stopped pacing and whipped his head up to glare over at Clint, before closing his eyes and taking a deep breath, running his hands through his hair.

"How long _have_ you known?" He snapped at Clint.

"A few days, but not for sure until I actually saw him," Clint responded calmly.

"A couple days? Why didn't you pick the phone up _right away?_ I should have been told right away! Obviously Sam knew, why didn't he say anything? Does Natasha know? Does everyone?" Steve sounded like he was walking the edge between anger and hurt right now, and Hannah was praying he landed somewhere sane.

"Look, you and Nat fell off the face of the goddamn earth, how was I supposed to contact you, Steve? I had no idea what the hell was going on, none of us did – the rest of us all reached out to each other when the shit hit the fan at SHIELD, but you never checked in. Nat never checked in – we were beginning to wonder if you were dead, and then all of a sudden this girl is phoning me, begging me to help her – that falls on you, Cap, you and her, not me," Clint was still maintaining a sense of calm, but he was indignant, and obviously feeling slightly defensive.

Clint pointed a hand back at the house and Hannah backed away from the window, in case either of them looked up; she didn't want them to know that she was eavesdropping.

"She's done most of this on her own, had some help at the beginning from someone else, she says, which is a whole separate, weird conversation you two get to have later - but she made it to a meeting place, managed not to get herself and your kid killed – and we're talking Hydra, Steve, that's no easy feat. Cut her a goddamn break, will you? Can you even imagine?" Clint's voice got louder and Hannah risked a peek out the window, to see he had stepped up even closer to Steve, and was pointing a finger at him.

" _I_ can imagine, Steve, _I've_ been there, that's why this house exists, why I have this secret of my own – I know exactly what she was worried about, why she was scared, except that she was alone – she had no Fury to help, no Nat on her side, she was alone," Clint's voice was earnest, but bordering on angry himself now, "Of course she kept that kid a secret! She hardly knew you – she only knew that SHIELD _owned_ you, and that the suit, the title, _owned_ you; she had no way to know that you would, or could, try to help."

Hannah peeked through the corner of the window, watching as Clint turned his back on Steve and walked away. She heard his voice one more time, from beneath the porch roof below her window; Clint had stopped in the doorway of his house to say one more thing,

"If you want a chance to know your son Steve, you need to get over it, and make it work, before they disappear for good."


	7. Chapter 7

***** Enjoy! I OWN NOTHING – except Hannah and Alex** *******

Steve didn't come upstairs. Hannah had a moment of profound gratitude for Clint, for his standing up for her, and thought that Steve would look contrite and come back upstairs and somehow everything would be perfect (though, her definition of perfect at the moment was fuzzy and undefined). Instead, Steve had stared at the house after Clint went inside. For a few long minutes he glared at the porch and Hannah nearly bit through her lip watching him.

Finally, without any preamble or surprise, Steve looked up at the window she was peering out of, meeting her eyes directly. She felt pinned to the spot with the realization that he'd known she was there the entire time. "Hannah," he said quietly, but firmly, "Come here please." She recognized the order in his tone and realized that this wasn't Steve Rogers talking, but Captain Steven Rogers, aka Captain America. It strangely chilled her to hear the formality in his tone.

Hannah turned from the window without a word or a nod. She couldn't muster either for him at the moment. She moved towards the bed and gently moved Alex from there into his crib, pausing to stare down at his sleeping face. _A few days ago, everything was normal and you were safe,_ she thought nostalgically, reaching a hand toward him and brushing the backs of her fingertips along Alex's chubby little cheek.

Turning from the playpen, she ran her fingers roughly through her half-dried, mussed-up strands of hair and then bit her lip as she straightened the t-shirt she was wearing, aware that it was slightly more snug than she would normally wear; Laura was a tiny woman and these were her clothes. Having stalled all she could, Hannah left the room quietly and slipped down the stairs. She turned the corner into the living room and banged straight into Clint. He grabbed her shoulders gently to keep her from pitching backwards, and raised his eyebrows at her.

"Whoa, whoa, slow down, he's not goin' anywhere," he comforted her and Hannah managed a weird, twisted half-smile before stepping away from Clint and heading to the kitchen, where Laura was chopping up vegetables.

"Can you –" Hannah began, her voice sounding dry and scratchy. Laura didn't look over, only nodded as she kept chopping, and cut Hannah's words off kindly. "I'll listen for him, but I bet he sleeps all afternoon," Laura told her. Hannah breathed and moved as quickly as she could towards the back door, stepping out onto the shaded porch in her bare feet. The rough wood was warm under her toes, and she rolled her shoulders when she breathed in the hay-scented air.

Steve was nowhere in sight, but she could hear a strangely rhythmic noise coming from the other side of the house: grunt, whoosh, chunk, grunt, whoosh chunk. She knew it had to be him, but couldn't figure out if he was fighting off bad guys or wrangling a bull or tearing a car in half. Bare feet slipping comfortably through the grass, Hannah made her way around Clint's home, to find Steve chopping logs with a vengeance. She stopped short when she saw him and tucked her hands into her pockets, not sure how to begin. _Carefully, begin carefully, you're both right and you're both wrong._

"You can't be angry with me," she said loudly, feeling her face heat with how terrible of an opener that statement was. Steve paused mid-swing and looked over at her, his face remaining flat, but one eyebrow raising. "You can't," she repeated stupidly, "I did everything for him. It was never about you, or me, it was always Alex." She pulled her hands out of her pockets and took a couple of steps towards him, and Steve dropped the axe he'd been using to the ground.

"I had a right to know," he told her, his voice not giving an inch.

"And I was right to worry about what would happen if people found out about him!" She yelled at him suddenly, her eyebrows slamming together in a furious scowl, "Clint tried to warn me, before I knew I was pregnant, it's why we broke up, and you know it! I was afraid of SHIELD, nervous about their power! Worried for myself and whatever life we might have! And _look!"_ She spread her arms wide out to the side, "Look where I am! They came for us Steve, they came to take him, to kill me in front of him and take him, to test him, to find out how much of you was in him!"

Steve's face was stricken, and Hannah was panting with emotion at this point. She took another clumsy step towards him, feeling the weight of the past few days pressing down on her shoulders. "They had a gun pressed to my head, and were about to kill me, while Alex watched, because I didn't know where you were, and was therefore useless," she cried passionately, "You can't imagine Steve, you can't, you don't know what that was like, you couldn't!"

Steve turned away from her for a moment, his face working as if he was trying to form words, and Hannah was suddenly really angry at him. "Turn. Around," she told him, in a soft, fierce voice. Steve slowly turned towards her and they stared at each other carefully for a long moment. He nodded at her and she closed her eyes and took a couple deep breaths, to calm herself down.

"If James hadn't shown up just then, I would be dead, and they'd have Alex," she murmured, her eyes still closed, "He saved us both Steve, but none of this would have happened – " her words were cut off when Steve grabbed her shoulders suddenly, making her squeak in surprise and pain.

"James?" He spoke loudly, urgently, "James who? Who?!" Hannah's wide eyes met his own frantic ones and she blinked at him a few times before wincing at the grip. "Steve you're hurting me," she said quietly and he let her go immediately.

"Hannah, I'm sorry, oh god, your poor arms –" Steve began to babble and Hannah could feel too many topics and emotions stacking on top of one another, confusing the original intent of this conversation. She put a hand on his arm for a brief moment.

"Steve, shut up," she spoke calmly and he stared at her for a moment, before his lips turned up in a brief smile. "Let's go sit," he said, gesturing towards a small porch swing that Clint had set up in the yard to face the fields, clearly to better view the setting sun each day. Hannah sat carefully and Steve followed suit. He was too big, taking up too much room, and it made her uncomfortable, so she climbed to her feet almost immediately. He moved as if to stand as well and she waved her hand at him.

"You're distracting me, just sit there," she spoke, trying to keep irritation from her voice – with all the seriousness right now, she was irritated with herself for still finding Steve physically distracting to the point of driving a lot of coherence from her mind. He nodded at her, crossing his arms (distractingly) across his chest.

"You know exactly which James I'm talking about," she said flatly, "And before you ask any more questions, let me just say a few things: No, I don't know where he is right now. No, he didn't hurt us. No, I don't know if he needs help. And finally, yes, he saved me and Alex because of you, for you." Hannah felt terrible at the sight of the emotions streaking across Steve's face; heartbreaking hope, sadness, guilt, and worry. "Alright," he finally said quietly, processing the information, "Thank you for telling me."

"You're welcome," she answered. They were both quiet for a moment. "Are you ready to listen and believe my intentions now?" She finally asked him, and he looked up at her, meeting her eyes for a long few seconds. "Yes," he said quietly, "Tell me everything."

Hannah took a deep breath and nodded at Steve before starting at the beginning, the very beginning, telling him about the day she suspected she might be pregnant, to the day she knew, to the days in between while her panic and her stomach swelled bigger and bigger, to the day it all became worth it, when Alex was put in her arms for the first time.

She talked to Steve about not naming a father on the birth certificate, and how Alex was the healthiest baby any doctor had ever seen, never getting sick once, no rashes, no fevers, only fussing when his teeth began to break in. She talked to him about the day Alex walked, the day he talked, and his love for their cat. Steve sat in rapt attention the entire time, as Hannah talked and paced, gesturing with her hands, using them to help tell the story.

He only looked upset when she began to talk about the day SHIELD fell. His glare grew as she spoke about the cops, and how James had jumped rooftops with her and Alex to get them away. She talked about James behavior briefly, hoping she was painting an accurate enough picture for him. He seemed to understand that James was an ally, just unbalanced, unsure, without his full mind at his disposal.

When she told him about the man in the bathroom, she lost her voice for a moment, swallowing hard, and one hand going to her throat as she remembered. "Alex was screaming, and I couldn't get the guy off, and it hurt so badly," she managed, and she turned away from him for a moment, counting to ten, to regain her composure. Steve got to his feet behind her and stepped towards her, and placed his hand on her back, between her shoulder blades.

"So I stabbed him in the throat with a chunk of glass," she finished, and she could feel Steve's hand twitch on her back, "He died and we ran." She turned around, stepping away from his hand, and was surprised to see stark admiration on his face. "Alex seems ok now though, so I guess he didn't know what he was seeing," she explained, and Steve nodded, and then shook his head a little bit.

"You're a lot tougher than you look," he said plainly, and she pressed her lips together and shrugged. "Steve, I'd kill anyone to keep him safe," she replied flatly, "I'd take on anyone I had to." Steve nodded and she waved her hand back at the house. "We got to a safe location, and Clint and your friend Sam came and got us, and then brought us here," she was done then, having been talking for nearly an hour straight, and felt a lot of the energy flood out of her. Steve stood before her and said nothing and she wondered briefly what happened next, crazy thoughts of custody moving through her mind momentarily.

"I would do anything to change what happened to you," he told her, his tone heavy with feeling. She met his eyes then and nodded. "I know," she replied, "But do you get it now? This was exactly what I was afraid of, this is why I said nothing." Steve swallowed and then clenched his jaw, she could see the muscles ticking in his face. She braced herself for a moment, prepared for an onslaught.

"I don't like it," Steve told her, "But I understand."

"You do?" She asked incredulously, squinting her eyes at him skeptically. He nodded. "I do," he assured her. Hannah nearly swooned to the ground in utter relief. She staggered away from him and sat on the swing, and after a moment he joined her, sitting next to her, but keeping as much space between them as the small seat afforded. "Now what?" She asked him, her mind completely unable to think past this exact moment. Steve shrugged, the movement making the swing sway slightly.

"We need to find somewhere permanent for you guys to go, somewhere safe," he told her kindly. She nodded and then leaned towards him, resting her head on his shoulder. There was no ulterior motive in the gesture, she just needed the comforting contact. He patted her knee twice before resting his hand on it, and they stayed that way for several long minutes.

"You haven't changed at all, except for better hair," she broke the silence quietly, and felt his shoulder move with his quiet laughter. "Neither have you," he replied, and she laughed shortly, a disbelieving chortle. "Oh Steve, you're still polite to the core," she told him drily, sitting up as she did. He turned to her, his eyes moving from the top of her messy blonde hair, down to her chin, before moving back to her eyes. He looked intently at her, a wide range of almost nameless emotions on his face.

"Hannah, you're just as beaut-" he began to speak in a softer, emphatic tone, but was cut-off by the sound of Alex's laughter, which was loud and squealing in happiness. Aware that she was definitely spoiling whatever moment they were having (and somewhat relieved to be doing so), Hannah hopped to her feet and walked around the swing to see Alex lumbering unsteadily through the grass from where Laura stood at the bottom of the porch stairs. Laura waved.

"He woke up and was asking for you," Laura called out, and then turned on her heel and went inside, very obviously leaving Alex with the two of them on purpose. Hannah dropped to her knees and held her arms out to Alex, a grin splitting her face at the smile on Alex's happy little face.

"Come here buddy!" She cried, waggling her fingers at him. He laughed again, the pleasant lilting noise filling the air, and he careened into her arms. Hannah pulled him into her arms and kissed his ear and neck and hair, making him laugh a little harder. She got to her feet, Alex still in her arms, and turned to Steve standing uncertainly next to the swing, watching them. Alex stopped laughing and was calmly and curiously regarding Steve, as if trying to place Steve's face in the repertoire of faces he knew.

She walked towards Steve and stopped in front of him. Alex craned his neck to look up at Steve and Hannah was about to introduce Alex, but realized she didn't know how. "Um," she began, "I don't know what to call you." Steve's head whipped to hers, concern on his face followed by mild panic.

"Oh, uh, I guess, well, would it be confusing if you went with Dad? Would he get that? Are you ok with that? Is that too much? Steve is ok, too, maybe later if he gets to know me…" Steve's flustered appearance and unsure words put Hannah at ease and she laughed, which made Alex laugh.

Steve laughed then as well and put his hand out towards Alex, "Hi Alex," he said gently, and laughed again when Alex didn't shake his hand, but instead gave him a high-five, a new trick Hannah knew the Bartons must have taught him. Her son turned to her and gave her a curious look. "Kitty, mama?" He asked, and she smiled sadly. "No sweetie, this is Steve, my friend, and your daddy," she explained, although she knew he didn't understand. Alex pursed his lips and glared at her before turning to Steve and demanding, "Kitty."

Steve looked at her in panic for a moment. "Um, your cat is at home," he answered his son, talking normally, obviously completely unfamiliar with baby talk. "Kitty?" Alex asked again and Steve nodded at him. "I will find kitty and I'll bring him back to you," Steve vowed solemnly. Alex laugh and reached out for another high-five, which Steve returned lightly. Hannah saw an opportunity and pounced on it, pushing Alex towards Steve then, forcing him to hold the baby. Alex was in a good mood, so she knew he wouldn't fuss. She was also beginning to suspect that Steve might need to be forced into actual real contact with the boy, so this worked brilliantly.

"I need to use the washroom, I'll be right back, keep him out here, he loves it here," she urged him. Steve looked stricken with complete and utter terror, Alex sitting awkwardly in his arms. Her son seemed completely unfazed and began to pull at the small wing-shaped badge on the side of Steve's t-shirt, finally managing to get it to his mouth so he could chew on it. Hannah smiled at Steve. "He's fine, I'll be right back," she told him, moving towards the house as quickly as she could. Steve opened his mouth in alarm, to yell something at her, but glanced down at Alex and thought better of yelling, she could tell. She made it inside quickly and then immediately went to a front window and crouched there, to watch him.

"Is he with Alex?" She heard Clint speak behind her and nodded. "Shhh, he might hear you," she warned him. Clint moved to the other window and leaned against the wall, peeking out between the curtains. Steve finally sat in the grass and Alex sat contentedly on his lap, pulling viciously at the badge on the sleeve again. She could see Steve talking and wondered what he was saying. Alex let out a delighted shriek when Steve handed him his wallet, and immediately began to pull everything out of it.

This led to Steve putting Alex on the ground and chasing after the paper that was blowing away. Hannah thought she had never heard Alex laugh so hard and her own grin threatened to crack her face open. When Steve had collected all the bits, she realized he was enjoying himself, laughing with Alex. Clint laughed and drifted away after a moment, and Hannah just kept watching.

After about 20 minutes, she realized that Alex was calling Steve 'kitty', but that Steve seemed to be alright with it. Eventually, they came inside and Hannah smirked at Steve when he found her at the window. "I figured as much," he told her wryly.

"You needed a push," she told him. He put his nose to the top of Alex's head for a moment, before putting him down and watching him chase the Barton kids. A deep sense of contentment seemed to settle over them both then, and it carried on the entire evening.

That night, after a relatively relaxed dinner with everyone, Hannah and Steve lay on opposite sides of her bed, Alex sleeping in between them, and she felt more peace in that moment than she had in a very long time.

"What happens now, Kitty?" She asked him, a teasing tone in her voice. Alex clearly identified Steve as 'Kitty' now, calling him that and only that all night long. Steve laughed quietly and lightly shoved her hip with the back of one hand. "Haha," he murmured. It was quiet for a moment, and then he spoke again. "You can't stay here, and you can't home," he told her gently, and she sighed sadly, nodding, because she knew he was right.

"I don't want to lose you guys again, but I can't disappear either, I have obligations too," he told her awkwardly, obviously not comfortable with saying something like that, but feeling duty-bound to do so. "I get it Steve," she said softly, "We'll figure it out – you can't disappear completely now - you've met him, and that wouldn't be right." He grunted in acknowledgement and Hannah rested her head against her pillow, feeling tired now.

Steve's hand was heavy on her shoulder when he rubbed it there comfortingly. "Hannah, go to sleep, we'll figure it out in the morning, I'm not going away, I'm not losing you guys – we'll work it out," Steve reassured her. And she believed him.


	8. Chapter 8

***** Hey guys – this is it! The last chapter – there won't be any more sequels because I think I've told all I want to with these guys** **I hope you enjoyed the ride, and as always: I OWN NOTHING – except Hannah and Alex *****

Tanya quickly swiped on some mascara, her mouth opening in the way it always did when she applied mascara. She could hear cartoons blaring in the living room and shook her head, knowing that the volume was up way louder than it should be, but she was in a hurry, so she didn't waste time going out there to have it turned down. Tucking the mascara away, she ran a brush quickly through her hair, pleased with the job her hairstylist had done; cutting her rich brown hair short had felt weird, but she loved the edgy style and felt like it saved her about an hour's worth of work each morning.

Back in her bedroom, Tanya buttoned her jeans and slid a sweater on over her tank-top. "Jack?" She called, pushing on her wedding rings and adjusting the sleeves on the sweater, "Jack are you dressed?" Her question was met with giggles out in the hallway, and she turned to see Jack standing there in her bedroom doorway, a smile on his face as he laughed. She knew that, at 3 years old, having mommy yell for you because she thought you were in the other room, when in fact you were standing right there, was just the absolute height of comedy.

"Good, you're dressed, go put on your boots, baby, it's time to go get daddy," she urged her son. He whooped in joy, like he always did when she told him Tom was coming home from work. His stints up in the oil fields usually lasted for two weeks at a time, and in between he would have about ten days off to spend with them. Jack lived for the moments Tom was home from work, and she had to admit she did too.

Their lives were routine here, the ins and outs of their daily activities following along like clockwork, and nothing about it was terrible, it was all very small-town suburban, thoroughly wholesome and normal, but Tom's mere presence lit up every corner of it, made life brighter and complete. _He's just like that though, a ball of sunshine,_ Tanya thought to herself, a smile on her face as she turned the lights out in the bedrooms and bathroom.

Tanya moved swiftly through their small house, used to this routine by now – getting Jack out the door each day to get him to daycare while she went to work at the diner was a trial no matter what. _TV off, toys in bin, there's his glove, why is my hat on the plant? Where is the cat?_ Tanya heard the sound of loud purring and turned back to the toy bin to see the cat curled up inside and laughed a little when she realized she'd just dumped all the toys back on top of the poor furry creature. He seemed unperturbed though, and she gave the furball a brief scratch on the head, before moving to the foyer. Jack was on the floor, pulling on his boots with exaggerated difficulty and Tanya bent to help.

Five minutes later and they were both out the door, loading into their small car, thick winter jackets on, along with hats, scarves, gloves, and heavy boots. Winter seemed to last forever up here, but she had to admit that houses were cheaper in northern Canada and oil work was plentiful, so Tom's job was easily keeping them living in comfort.

She and Jack sang on their way to the bus depot, and as they caterwauled purposefully off key, she realized just how eager she was to see Tom again. It always felt like too long, and the separation was extremely hard some days. _Especially now, since you've got some news._ Tanya's eyes caught on Jack's smiling face in the backseat, where he sat snugly buckled into his car seat, and she knew that it was worth it, that living like this afforded Jack the kind of life he deserved.

" _Daddy!"_ Jack shrieked happily in the backseat, when they rounded the final corner to the bus depot and saw Tom standing outside of it, duffle bag on the ground next to him, as he waved from the curb. Tanya pulled up, threw the car in park and leapt out of the vehicle, running around the front of it to throw herself at Tom. He scooped her up into his arms, and pressed his lips to hers in an eager kiss, nearly squeezing the life out of her. She giggled and pulled away.

"I'm still not used to that thing," she told him softly, running a gloved finger along his mustache, "It tickles." Tom waggled his eyebrows at her and kissed her again before releasing her and pulling open the back door of the car to unleash Jack, who climbed all over him, jabbering a mile a minute while he clung to his dad. A few minutes later and they were all back in the car, driving back to the house, Tom at the wheel now. Jack was still telling Tom about every tiny detail of what had happened to him today, and Tanya kept hold of one of Tom's hands in hers.

The indescribably _right_ feeling of having all three of them together settled over her, and Tanya sighed happily, earning her a good-natured smile from her husband. "Happy?" He asked her and she nodded, stretching across the seat to press a gentle kiss to his cheek. "Always, but definitely _very_ happy to see you," she promised him, flicking up an eyebrow at him.

Later that night, after a happy dinner, and a restful evening relaxing in the living room, Tanya stood in Jack's doorway and watched as Tom tucked the boy in after his bedtime story. She felt her chest tighten with emotion, watching Jack and Tom together, and couldn't keep the smile from her face when she heard Jack say, "Goodnight, Daddy."

She stepped back into the hallway as Tom walked out of the boy's bedroom, half-closing the door behind himself, the dim, warm glow of the nightlight coming through the crack. She chuckled a little when he looked at her. "What?" He asked, a smile on his face at seeing her laugh. "Oh nothing, Kitty," she answered easily, smiling mischievously when he chuckled and rolled his eyes. They walked hand in hand back to their bedroom and she sat on their bed while he began to undress, changing into comfortable clothes. She remembered how pleased he'd been when Jack had finally stopped calling him 'Kitty' and switched to 'Daddy'.

"Steve," she said quietly, watching him, and he turned to her, a grin on his face at her use of his actual name, "Come here." She reached out towards him, and he dropped the shirt he was about to put on, and strode over to her bare chested. She could feel her breathing quicken at the sight of him, and didn't resist when he tipped her back onto the bed and began to undress her. "Wait," she told him, hands reaching towards his face. His eyebrows came together in concern, until she peeled off the mustache and lay it on the nightstand. Steve laughed and so did she, and then he brought his face to hers, lightly kissing her all over her lips and cheeks. They made love like people who had been separated for too long, and she thanked god that Jack (Alex), was a heavy sleeper.

Afterwards, laying in Steve's arms, watching him as he watched her, his hands stroking her short dark hair gently, she felt at ease, and restful, and fully safe, for the first time in a long time. "I missed you," he told her, "Hannah, every day, I missed you both." She nodded and kissed his forehead. "I know," she replied quietly, "You know I did too."

"It won't be forever," he told her, like he always did, both of them knowing that it was likely a lie. She didn't mind, even if she did feel a little lonely sometimes without him. She watched the news and perused the internet – she was aware of a little bit of what he was up to, and knew that his work was valuable, that the world needed him to be his other self. And Jack was happy, and safe, and living the kind of normal life that most people would be bored with, but that she was thrilled they were both alive to experience.

It had taken a couple of weeks, and it had taken a lot of pressure on some of his peers to assist him with getting them the goods they needed to start over: passports, fake IDs, fake backgrounds, weaving "Tanya", "Jack", and "Tom" into the fabric of the world, making them seem like real people with real histories. The people he went to were not eager to help him get these things, to do these things, with no questions asked, without knowing why, but he managed. He and Clint had sworn up and down that no one anywhere knew where she and Alex were going.

Leaving the Barton's home had been hard, she felt safe there, and truly liked and trusted Laura and Clint, but Laura had pushed a phone number into her hand on a scrap of paper. "Call me, it's a landline, the only one in the house, heavily encrypted," Laura assured her when Hannah began to protest about their safety, "Call me, Hannah, anytime." Hannah had hugged the woman tightly and left reluctantly. She and Steve were already in the disguise that being Tanya and Tom Irvine called for: her hair and eyebrows dyed brown, Steve's were too, in addition to the heavier rugged mustache on his face, though his was a temporary dye job, while hers was permanent (and required constant upkeep).

She had wept that morning, cutting all of Alex's curls off, keeping his hair as short as possible to hide the color as best as they could – Hannah had been completely unwilling to dye his hair, so this was the price of that choice. Steve had leaned against the bathroom door frame in the farmhouse and watched her with mild amusement as she mourned the loss of Alex's beautiful curls. "It's like cutting the sun," she had cried, feeling stupid. Alex thought it was great and grabbed up handfuls of his fallen hair and threw them at Steve.

Clint had dropped them at a bus station and pulled Hannah aside before she could leave, Steve (Tom) and Alex (Jack) standing on the other side of the station watching the buses pull in and out. He handed her a phone, an older style cell phone. "Call this if you need help, understand?" His voice was dead serious and she nodded, taking the phone and tucking it into her purse. "And you'll get Steve?" She asked, zipping the phone into an inner pocket. Clint reached out and put his hand on hers and squeezed lightly.

"No, this is not about Steve, this is just between you and I: if you and Alex need help, call me and I'll come," he clarified, his eyes hard. She swallowed and nodded and then gave him a hug as well. "I don't really think you look like a caveman," she told him, not really knowing why. Clint left them laughing.

It took them 4 days of zig zag travel to reach their new home, where she and Steve house-hunted, bought a car, and drove into the nearest big city to get furniture. A lot of her and Alex's possessions had been retrieved from her old apartment, covertly, as well as the cat, which had pleased Alex to no end – so the house looked pleasantly real, although all of the pictures of them had been doctored to change her coloring and in some cases, to add Steve (she never asked who did that, but strongly suspected his friend Sam).

Things with Steve had been awkward those first couple of weeks. They had no real history, and had to build on nothing but secrets and trauma, so it was a slow go. She knew that he wanted more with her, that he wanted everything with her, not just the show they had to put on for the people they met in town. She wasn't sure yet, though, and besides, she was adjusting to a new name, to Alex's new name, the complete loss of her old life and everyone in it. It was a hard enough transition.

When Steve left the first time, she and Alex had both wept bitterly at the bus station, Alex refusing to let go of 'Kitty' and Hannah utterly terrified that he would never come back. When he left, she experienced a black mood that lasted the entire time he was gone. When she went to pick him up the first time, she fully expected him to not show, but sure enough, there he stood, Tom Irvine, waiting in a heavy plaid shirt and dirty khakis, work boots on his feet and a mustache on his face. She had cried in relief, embarrassing herself and making Steve desperate to put a smile on her face.

After that, things were easier, she and Steve worked at forging an actual friendship, a relationship built on something more than just a couple dates, and they charmed their neighbors and her new work friends by having 'date nights'. Six months after moving into hiding, she and Steve slept together again. At this point Alex called himself Jack and called Steve 'Daddy'.

Life was weird, and different, but she was enjoying the ride, finally. Now, nearly a year after that, she couldn't imagine anything else. She had a life here, friends, co-workers, a relatively non-taxing job, a house with a yard that she loved. Alex went trick-or-treating with Steve, and they spent Thanksgiving and Christmas together as a family. Their second New Years together, she finally told him that she loved him, although he'd already said it to her a hundred times.

She spoke on the phone with Laura once a week, and had Steve work as a go-between for sending and receiving pictures of the kids. Hannah and Laura talked of a 'vacation': Tanya and Jack going to visit the Bartons for a couple of weeks, meet the new baby, relax on the farm; Hannah thought a chance to be her old self again for a little while would be positively delightful. Not that she hated this new life; it was not the life she had dreamt of having, but now she loved it. Hannah thought that one day, maybe, things would be safe, and she and Alex could move away with Steve, and live together always, somewhere safe. Maybe it was a pipe dream, but it made saying good bye to Steve easier.

In bed now, Steve rested his head against the top of hers and she could feel him growing heavier as he began to drift off to sleep. She had other news for him, and in typical fashion, had been silent about it because she was nervous about his reaction. She'd put it off long enough though, and she shook him a little to get his attention.

"Steve," she said quietly, "I have to tell you something." He murmured wordless acknowledgement at her and kissed her bare shoulder, before nuzzling at her neck a little and resting his head next to hers on her pillow.

"Steve, listen," she told him, and he grunted. "Sorry, what?" He replied sleepily. Hannah sighed and decided to get right to the point. She took his hand and rested it flat on her stomach, saying firmly, "I'm pregnant."

He froze solid and she wondered if this would be the thing that killed Captain America – he seemed pretty indestructible, and unfazed by gods, aliens, and killer robots - but easily shocked by small domestic things. "You are?" He managed to croak out. Hannah sat up and nodded at him as he lay there, his hand still rested against her belly. His face remained fairly blank for a couple of long minutes before a huge grin slowly grew on it, his eyes lighting up as the smile grew. He leaned towards her and kissed her stomach before sitting up and kissing her, long and deep. He cupped her face in his hands and she smiled at him, teary eyed with happiness, happy with his reaction, happy at the thought of their future.

"At least you told me this time," he told her, laughing. She glared at him for a moment and then laughed with him. When he finally settled down, she reached out and grabbed his hand, deciding that she was definitely going to get the last word. "I've been to the doctor, everything looks great," she told him, and he nodded, smiling in relief and still chuckling a little at his joke. Hannah sat back against her pillows and grinned at him cheekily.

"It's twins."

 ***** I decided to end on a happy note, hope you all enjoyed! *****


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